Musk set to clip Twitter’s wings with a new X logo

Billionaire owner announces that Twitter’s new logo, an X, will replace the distinctive blue bird - the latest in a series of radical changes to the platform.

Elon Musk tweeted that Twitter’s bird logo, known as Larry, was to be ditched as he invited followers to post their logo designs for X, a brand he has long favoured. Picture: Getty

Elon Musk has promised to “bid adieu” to the Twitter brand and logo and replace it with X.

The Twitter owner tweeted yesterday (Sunday): “And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds”. He added: “If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make go live worldwide tomorrow”.

And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 23, 2023

He pinned an image of a flickering “X” to the top of his Twitter page, and later in an audio chat said that the brand change “should have been done a long time ago”.

pic.twitter.com/IwcbqMnQtA

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 23, 2023

“We’re cutting the Twitter logo off the building with blowtorches,” he added. Musk also emailed Twitter employees, telling them it was the last time he would email from a Twitter address, according to the technology journalist Zoe Schiffer.

Tweeting a picture of himself crossing his arms, he said: “Not sure what subtle clues gave it way, but I like the letter X.” One of his first ventures was the X.com banking service he founded in 1999. In April he absorbed Twitter into X Corp, a holding company, and this month created x.AI, an artificial intelligence company.

Not sure what subtle clues gave it way, but I like the letter X pic.twitter.com/nwB2tEfLr8

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 23, 2023

In May 2020 he and the Canadian singer Grimes announced that they were naming their newborn son X Æ A-12.

His ultimate vision has been to turn Twitter into an “everything app” akin to those seen in Asia which handle everything from micro-blogging to payments, reservations and chat.

Despite this, Twitter still says on its brand toolkit page that the light-blue bird, called Larry, is its “most recognisable asset . . . that’s why we’re so protective of it”.

Musk briefly replaced the bird in April with the dog logo of the “joke” cryptocurrency dogecoin.

It is not clear whether the brand overhaul is just of the logo or the company name, but the move is the latest in a series of radical changes to the platform.

Since acquiring Twitter for $65 billion in October Musk has shrunk the staff by 80 per cent, introduced a controversial paid-for verification of users and started to limit the amount of tweets people could see.

None of this appears to have turned round the financial situation of the company, with Musk saying the company is still losing money because of a 50 per cent drop off in advertising revenue and a large debt load, estimated at $19 billion.

A lawsuit filed last week claims that Twitter owes at least $743 million in severance pay to former employees.

Twitter’s competitors have begun to see an opportunity, with Meta launching a Twitter-clone called Threads, which is connected to Instagram and has attracted more than 110 million users.

One Twitter shareholder, Ark Investment Management, said it had written down its stake by 47 per cent since Musk took over. However, the Ark chief executive, Cathie Wood, said the company still believed in Twitter’s long-term prospects. Ark was looking to buy more shares, although “no one wants to let any go . . . so that tells you something”, she told The Wall Street Journal.

Twitter’s first bird logo was created by a British graphic designer, Simon Oxley, and someone at Twitter bought it for $22 from the iSock website in 2006. However, it was soon replaced by iterations of the present version, Larry, who gained his name from the legendary Boston Celtics basketball player, Larry Bird.

Larry gained his name from the legendary Boston Celtics basketball player, Larry Bird. picture: AFP

Gordon MacMillan, former head of content strategy at Twitter for Europe, Middle East and Africa, described the latest move as an “act of self-sabotage”.

“Companies rebrand all the time but one lesson that screams out from Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter is, if it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it. Ditching Larry and even the name looks like another act of self-sabotage,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

Major rebrandings are not uncommon among big tech companies but measuring success is difficult.

Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2021 as Mark Zuckerberg sought to pivot towards virtual reality and the metaverse, but has yet to see much return from its tens of billions of investment in the platform.

Google restructured in 2015 to create Alphabet, a holding company, but retained its core brand as a subsidiary.

The Times