By Mrinmay Dey and Michelle Conlin
(Reuters) – Twitter Inc owner Elon Musk on Sunday signaled he would do more to take the social media company in a new direction with a rebranding that will replace its well-known blue bird logo with an X after acknowledging advertisers have been slow to return.
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The change, which was not evident on the website on Sunday afternoon, followed Musk’s recent admission that advertising revenue remains nearly half of what it once was. And Twitter’s cash flow has been negative as a result of that and its heavy debt load.
“Interim X logo goes live later today,” Musk said on Twitter adding that “X.com” would now redirect to Twitter’s website. Musk’s X Corp owns Twitter.
The billionaire said in a Sunday post he wanted to change Twitter’s logo and polled his millions of followers whether they would favor changing the site’s color scheme from blue to black. He posted a picture of a stylized X against a black outer space-themed background.
“And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds”, he said. The company said it would be commenting on the changes later.
Late Sunday afternoon, Twitter’s new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, tweeted: “It’s an exceptionally rare thing – in life or in business – that you get a second chance to make another big impression. Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square.”
Under Musk’s tumultuous tenure since he bought Twitter in October, the company has changed its business name to X Corp, reflecting the billionaire’s vision to create a “super app” like China’s WeChat.
In April, Twitter’s legacy blue bird logo was temporarily replaced by Dogecoin’s Shiba Inu dog, helping drive a surge in the cryptocurrency’s market value.
The company came under widespread criticism from users and marketing professionals when Musk announced early this month that Twitter would limit how many tweets per day various accounts can read.
The daily limits helped Meta Platforms-owned rival service Threads, which crossed 100 million sign-ups within five days of its July 5 launch.
(Reporting by Mrinmay Dey and Rishabh Jaiswal in Bengaluru; Editing by William Mallard, Jan Harvey, Cynthia Osterman and Diane Craft)
By: OAN
