MEDIA - "X". This is the incomplete message published by Elon Musk in the early hours of Monday 24 July to announce Twitter's new name and logo. The social network is thus living out its final hours in this form and is set to undergo a complete identity change: no more blue and no more bird. At 11am on Monday, the application's logo had already become an "X" on a black background.
Several months ago, the whimsical businessman and SpaceX boss announced that he wanted to turn Twitter into an "X", in homage to his favourite letter, as reported by the online media Numerama.
On Saturday evening, the project gathered pace when the billionaire tweeted: "we'll soon be saying goodbye to the Twitter brand and, gradually, to all the birds".before suggesting that the new logo could be a " X ".
The new logo projected onto the headquarters in San Francisco
On Sunday, playing with suspense, he pinned to his Twitter profile a video posted by a user of the platform showing the current Twitter logo, a blue bird, replaced by a flashing X. "If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we'll put it online worldwide tomorrow".he added.
Linda Yaccarino, Twitter's new CEO since May, has confirmed this project. X will create "a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services and opportunities".she said on her account on Monday, adding: "Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we've only just begun to imagine".. She also posted an image of the new logo projected onto Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco.
After buying Twitter last year for 44 billion dollars, Elon Musk changed the name of the company to "X Corp in April 2023, and regularly mentions its nebulous plans to transform it into a multi-faceted application, with financial services, like WeChat in China.
Tweets become 'X's
In response to a question from an Internet user asking whether Twitter would be accessible from the x.com address, Elon Musk replied: "Of course. X.com was the name and website of the online bank founded by the businessman which later became the online payment service PayPal.
Asked by another user, Musk also said that tweets would be called Xs after the name change.
The name change comes at a time of difficulty for Twitter, where Elon Musk has laid off around half the staff and advertising revenues have halved, according to the billionaire. The social network faces a myriad of competing applications, including newcomer Threads, launched by Meta.
Text by Le HuffPost with AFP
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