This past weekend, Elon Musk gave Twitter an official rebrand, replacing the iconic blue bird logo with the X. It's no surprise; Musk has a longstanding fascination with the letter X and hopes to turn the platform into a catch-all app. According to Jasmine Enberg, analyst at Insider Intelligence, the rebrand serves as a reminder that Musk was and continues to be the most likely contender to overthrow Twitter.
Elon Musk's admiration of the letter X has held strong. Now, he's phasing out the Twitter brand and the blue bird logo to make way for X as part of a larger effort to make the $44 billion acquisition his own. Musks's X has potential to be a super app much like China's WeChat- offering an all-in-one service for entertainment, goods, services, posts and messaging. Unfortunately, this move comes after months of Musk's questionable behavior which has turned users away and deterred advertisers, leaving Twitter with decreased finances and more competition. Killing off an extremely popular internet brand has been criticized as "extremely risky" especially with Instagram's Threads and smaller apps like Bluesky taking away Twitter users. The company spokesperson has stayed silent.
In March, Musk renamed his corporate Twitter to X Corp with X Holding Corp as the parent company despite purchasing Twitter a month prior with the intention of creating the "everything app". This isn't entirely unexpected, as X features heavily in the name of his SpaceX rocket company, and X.com being the name of his payments company before it merged to become PayPal. Rebranding has become common among web companies, for example, Google changing to Alphabet and more recently Facebook to Meta. But these changes haven't disrupted use of the services as was the case with Twitter.
Musk is now pushing to make X his main priority and has introduced a new logo for X earlier last weekend, along with tweeting that "we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds." CEO Linda Yaccarino mentioned in an email to employees that the goal is to "continue to delight our entire community with new experiences in audio, video, messaging, payments, banking" to create a global platform for ideas, goods and services. There are still some big barriers as the project requires significant capital which Twitter currently lacks. Additionally, companies have become uncomfortable advertising on Twitter due to reports of hate speech and racist/offensive messages. In an attempt to counter the losses, Musk has introduced a $8 a month subscription service, though he has admitted it will take millions of subscribers to make up for the financial hit.
As William Blair Analyst Ralph Schackart noted after surveying advertisers, none of the companies polled showed an increased spending on Twitter. Although, there are signs that the digital ad market may be improving according to a William Blair survey. Insights Analyst Jasmine Enberg issued a statement saying that it is "a reminder that Elon Musk, not Threads or any other app, is and has always been the most likely 'Twitter killer.'
It can be said that Musk is taking a big risk in replacing an iconic brand which is recognizable across the world. With an 8 dollar subscription fee, he would have to attract millions of users to make up for the loss of advertisers and revenue. Only time will tell if the transition from Twitter to X will be successful.
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