Exit the volatile: Twitter, which means tweet in English and which used a blue bird as its logo since its beginnings in 2006, launched its new logo on its website on Monday, a stylized capital X in black and white.
Elon Musk, the whimsical businessman and owner of the social network, and the company’s new chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, hired just a month ago, announced over the weekend that the platform would drop the bluebird logo, be rebranded as X and rapidly diversify into payments, banking and commerce.
While the social network’s website is showing the new logo on Monday morning, its URL is still twitter.com, the blue “Tweet” button is still on the site, and some users have seen a blue version of the X logo.
“‘X’ is here! We will do it, ”wrote on Twitter Mme Yaccarino, posting a photo of the new logo around 1:50 a.m. EDT Monday.
By Sunday, Mr Musk had changed his profile picture on Twitter, replacing it with the new logo, which he described as “art deco minimalist”. He also changed the link in his bio to X.com, which now redirects to the Twitter site.
On Saturday night, Mr. Musk had said he was considering ditching Twitter’s bluebird. “We will soon say ‘farewell’ (in French, editor’s note) to the Twitter brand and, gradually, to all the birds,” he tweeted, before suggesting that the new logo could be an X.
Asked by a netizen, Mr. Musk had also indicated that the tweets would be called Xs after the name change.
X is a mathematical symbol that the boss of Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter and Neuralink is particularly fond of. X. com was the name and website of the online bank founded by the businessman that later became the PayPal online payment service.
He also took over the symbol for the aerospace company SpaceX, the company that acquired Twitter (called X Corp) and the start-up dedicated to artificial intelligence xAI, unveiled in mid-July, as well as for the first name of one of his children, a boy baptized X Ae A-12.
This change of identity comes in a delicate period for Twitter, whose advertising revenues have fallen by 50%, the platform being deserted by many advertisers scalded by the brutal reshuffle of Elon Musk and decisions deemed difficult to read.
Since buying Twitter last year for $44 billion, Mr. Musk has regularly talked about his nebulous plan to turn it into a multifaceted application, with financial services, like WeChat in China.
” New start “
“Operating by [intelligence artificielle] (AI), X will connect us in ways we are only just beginning to imagine,” M detailed.me Yaccarino, Sunday on Twitter.
“X is the future state of boundless interactivity — centered around audio, video, messaging, payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services and opportunities,” she added.
“There are absolutely no limits to this transformation. X will be the platform that can provide, well…everything,” she continued.
“For years, fans and critics alike have pushed Twitter to dream bigger, innovate faster, fulfill our potential. X will do that and more, ”assured this former executive of NBC Universal, recruited by Mr. Musk in particular to try to reassure advertisers.
“A name change can signal a strategic shift, modernize a brand, or help out of an image crisis,” says University of Pittsburgh marketing professor Vanitha Swaminathan. “In the case of Twitter, it’s all three. »
In the case of the social network, “it could give it a fresh start,” she says, “but it needs to be followed by specific metrics that show that something is actually happening.”
“This change is a monumental marketing mistake,” retorted entrepreneur Sam Kelly on Twitter. “Twitter is an iconic global brand with immense value. A whole terminology has been created around it”, such as the verb tweeter, passed into everyday language, “which cannot be replicated with ‘X’”.
Simon Kemp, CEO of digital consultancy Kepios, said he was skeptical of Twitter’s ability to become a super app, which would require massive investment, while Elon Musk has been mostly focused on cutting costs so far.
“Given the way Mr. Musk has treated Twitter employees since his acquisition” of the social network, “I do not imagine that many developers will rush” to join the company and “create new” applications, “unless Mr. Musk can offer exceptional incentives”, which “will be even more difficult given the current indebtedness of the company”, judged Mr. Kemp.
However, the platform could become “an excellent aggregator of global and paid information”, he estimated.
The social network faces a myriad of competing apps, including Meta-launched newcomer Threads, which has around 117 million users, according to specialist firm Quiver Quantitative.
Twitter gathered, for its part, just over 200 million daily users at the beginning of July, according to the specialized company SensorTower.
