Elon Musk mentioned he was about to make probably the most seen modifications to Twitter since he took management of the social media firm final fall: changing its well known chicken emblem.
In a tweet early Sunday morning Japanese time, Mr. Musk mentioned that “quickly we will bid adieu to the twitter model and, progressively, all of the birds.”
He added shortly after, “If a adequate X emblem is posted tonight,” it will “go dwell worldwide tomorrow.”
“X” is a time period for what Mr. Musk has described as an “every part app” that might mix social media, prompt messaging and cost providers, akin to the favored Chinese language app WeChat.
Mr. Musk has mentioned that purchasing Twitter is “an accelerant to creating X,” and the company entity he created to buy and management Twitter is named X Holdings.
Mr. Musk spoke on a Twitter audio livestream early Sunday to say he was altering Twitter’s emblem. “It ought to have been carried out a very long time in the past,” he mentioned. “Sorry it took so lengthy.”
A number of hours later, Mr. Musk mentioned in an e-mail to Twitter’s workers that “we’re certainly altering to X” and that it was taking place “right this moment.” “That is my final message from a Twitter e-mail,” he wrote, earlier than signing off with a salute emoji.
Mr. Musk has few obstacles to creating such alterations on the firm after taking it non-public as a part of his acquisition of the agency. However he might nonetheless encounter resistance from the banks which have lent him billions of {dollars} and the non-public traders he introduced into the deal, who might increase issues about jettisoning certainly one of Twitter’s most seen property.
The corporate noticed its promoting income plummet amid the departure of gross sales executives and worries that the positioning had develop into extra liable to problematic content material. It now faces a well-funded rival in Threads, the just lately launched Twitter-like service from Meta, the proprietor of Fb.
Twitter didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Mr. Musk has had an extended affinity for the letter X. In 1999, he co-founded X.com, a web based financial institution, and later merged it with one other start-up to create PayPal. In 2017, he mentioned that he repurchased the X.com area from PayPal.
Mr. Musk has not all the time adopted by on his public pronouncements, equivalent to when he tweeted that the corporate would create a content material moderation council to guage what sort of speech is appropriate on the positioning.
However he has pressed forward in altering sure Twitter practices, like ending the free verification of distinguished customers’ accounts, denoted by a white-and-blue test mark, and charging customers a subscription price for the test mark as a substitute.