Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1504427
NEWS 12 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 26 JULY 2023 Twitter's blue bird is seen on its headquarters building in San Francisco, Monday, July 24, 2023. Elon Musk has unveiled a new "X" logo to replace Twitter's famous blue bird as he follows through with a major rebranding of the social media platform he bought for $44 billion last year ELON Musk unveiled a new "X" logo on Monday to replace Twit- ter's famous blue bird as he fol- lows through with a rebranding of the social media platform he bought for $44 billion last year. The X started appearing at the top of the desktop version of Twitter on Monday, but the bird was still dominant across the smartphone app. At Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco on Tuesday, workers were seen removing the iconic bird logo Monday until police showed up and stopped them because they didn't have the proper permits and didn't tape off the sidewalk to keep pedestrians safe if any- thing fell. As of early afternoon, the "er" at the end of Twitter remained visible. "It's the end of an era, and a clear signal that the Twitter of the past 17 years is gone and not coming back," said Jasmine Enberg, an analyst with Insider Intelligence. "But the writing was on the wall: Musk has been vocal about transforming Twit- ter into platform X from the start, and Twitter was already a shell of its former self." It's yet another change that Musk has made since acquiring Twitter that has alienated us- ers and turned off advertisers, leaving the microblogging site vulnerable to new threats, in- cluding rival Meta's new text- based app Threads. Musk had asked fans for lo- go ideas and chose one, which he described as minimalist Art Deco, saying it "certainly will be refined." He replaced his own Twitter icon with a white X on a black background and posted a picture of the design projected on Twitter's San Francisco headquarters. "And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, grad- ually, all the birds," Musk tweeted Sunday. Twitter still has a brand toolkit page on its website call- ing the light-blue bird its "most recognizable asset." While that page says the company is pro- tective of its logo and offers guidelines on how to use it, Musk apparently isn't a fan. "It should have been done a long time ago," he said Sun- day during a brief Twitter Spaces appearance, referring to changing the logo. "We're cutting the Twitter logo off the building with blowtorches," he said, potentially referring to the sign he's already altered on the company's San Francisco headquarters. The X.com web domain re- directs users to Twitter.com, Musk said. "I can't say I'm surprised, but I think it's a very selfish deci- sion," said Hannah Thoreson of Baltimore, Md., who's used Twitter since 2009 for work and personal posts. "There are so many small businesses and so many non- profits and so many govern- ment agencies and things like that all around the world that have relied on Twitter for many years to push their message and reach people," she said. "And they all have the Twitter icon on everything from their web- site to their business cards." Changing all this costs time and money, she added, not to mention the confusion that comes with a previously un- known brand name. "I mean, do you want to get rid of the Coca-Cola brand if you're Coca-Cola? Why would you do that?" said Thoreson, who now primarily uses Mas- todon. Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla, has long been fasci- nated with the letter and had already renamed Twitter's cor- porate name to X Corp. after he bought it in October. The billionaire is also CEO of rocket company Space Ex- ploration Technologies Corp., commonly known as SpaceX. And he started an artificial in- telligence company this month called xAI to compete with ChatGPT. In 1999, he founded a startup called X.com, an on- line financial services company now known as PayPal. He also calls one of his sons, whose mother is singer Grimes, "X." The child's actual name is a collection of letters and sym- bols. Musk's Twitter purchase and rebranding are part of his strat- egy to create what he's dubbed an "everything app " similar to China's WeChat, which com- bines video chats, messaging, streaming and payments. Musk has made a number of dras- tic changes since taking over Twitter, including a shift to focusing on paid subscriptions, but he doesn't always follow through on his attention-grab- bing new policy pronounce- ments. Linda Yaccarino, the longtime NBC Universal executive Musk tapped to be Twitter CEO in May, posted the new logo and weighed in on the change, writ- ing on Twitter that X would be "the future state of unlimit- ed interactivity -- centered in audio, video, messaging, pay- ments/banking -- creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportu- nities." Analyst Enberg said the new name "is a reminder that Elon Musk, not Threads or any oth- er app, is and has always been the most likely 'Twitter killer.'" "Musk supporters will likely celebrate the rebrand, but it's a gloomy day for many Twitter users and advertisers," she said. "Even so, Twitter's corporate brand is already heavily inter- twined with Musk's person- al brand, with or without the name X, and much of Twitter's established brand equity has already been lost among users and advertisers." But Paolo Pescatore, a tech and media analyst and found- er of PP Foresight, said the change could be a good idea. "People are now getting in- creasingly frustrated with a Bye-bye, birdie: Elon Musk replaces