Twitter launched its new logo on Monday, killing the blue bird on its website and replacing it with a stylized “X” in an effort to rebrand the microblogging site as a competitor, giving Meta’s Threads, the Elon Musk-owned social media messaging service, a run for its money.
Our headquarters tonight pic.twitter.com/GO6yY8R7fO
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 24, 2023
Elon Musk and Twitter CEO, Linda Yacarino, jointly revealed a new logo for the social media platform on Monday.
The logo features a white “X” on a black background, replacing the familiar blue bird symbol.
“X is here! Let’s do it,” Yaccarino tweeted, posting a photo of the logo on the company’s offices in San Francisco.
X is here! Let’s do this. pic.twitter.com/1VqEPlLchj
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayacc) July 24, 2023
Both Yaccarino and Musk added the X logo to their Twitter handles, while the traditional Twitter blue bird symbol appears across the platform.
In a post on Sunday, Musk expressed his desire to change Twitter’s logo and conducted a poll among his millions of followers, which showed a preference for changing the site’s color scheme from blue to black.
He shared a photo of a sleek X on a space-themed black background and called it the “interim X logo.”
Lights. Camera. X! pic.twitter.com/K9Ou47Qb4R
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayacc) July 24, 2023
Yaccarino, a former NBCUniversal advertising chief who started as Twitter CEO on June 5, takes over as the social media platform tries to reverse declining advertising revenue.
Musk had previously named Twitter’s parent company X Corp. and said his takeover of the social media giant was “an acceleration in creating X, the everything app” — a reference to the X.com company he founded in 1999, which later became online payments giant PayPal.
Such an app can still function as a social media platform and include messaging and mobile payments.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 23, 2023
“Powered by AI, X will connect us in ways we’re only just beginning to imagine,” Yaccarino tweeted on Sunday.
Yaccarino, a former NBCUniversal advertising sales executive who was hired by Musk to be Twitter CEO last month, said the social media platform is close to expanding its reach.
“X is the future state of infinite interaction – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services and opportunities,” Yaccarino tweeted.
New revenue streamsÂ
Since Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last October, the platform’s ad business has collapsed in part because marketers have blamed Musk’s management style and content moderation in the wake of mass firings at the company.
In response, the billionaire SpaceX boss has moved to introduce payments and commerce through the platform in search of new revenue.
The platform is believed to have 200 million daily active users, but has suffered repeated technical glitches since Musk fired most of his staff.
Many users and advertisers alike have reacted negatively to the social media site’s new charges for previously free services, changes to content moderation and the return of previously banned right-wing accounts.
Musk said this month that Twitter has lost about half of its ad revenue since he took control.
Facebook parent Meta also launched its own text-based platform this month, called Threads, which has up to 150 million users, according to some estimates.
But according to data from market analysis firm Sensor Tower, the amount of time users spend on the rival app has dropped in the weeks since its launch.
