We were getting worried: we hadn’t had any news from Elon Musk for a few days.
While we don’t have any substantial updates on his rumored next in-ring challenge against Mark Zuckerberg, here it is the Twitter owner is once again making headlines with an apparently more… substantial announcement. We say in appearance, because when it comes to Musk we have already learned it: until a statement from him materializes, it could be one of the many shots that remain so.
For now (we are writing on the morning of Monday 24th July) on the home page the legendary blue bird still stands out from the social network of twitters. But let’s get to the news: Musk announced the new Twitter logo, which will be an X. Goodbye little bird, in short.
The announcement of the new Twitter logo
The announcement of the new Twitter logo followed Musk’s style perfectly. Who expressed himself, as usual, through a series of tweets, with the usual somewhat convoluted and approximate form. Faithful reflection of a way of deciding that really seems to be based on improvisation rather than solid programming.
However, at 6:06 on Sunday July 23 Elon Musk writes: “If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make go live worldwide tomorrow.” That is: “If a good enough X logo is released tonight, tomorrow we will send it live all over the world.” As if to say: we are rehearsing the logo live.
Two minutes earlier another tweet had appeared, under the banner of a certain megalomania (therefore always in the Musk style). Which read: “We will soon be saying goodbye to the Twitter brand and, gradually, to all the birds.” Beyond the disturbing hunting nuance contained in the message, this second twitter would suggest a non-immediate replacement of the company logo.
The new Twitter logo on Musk’s profile
If the bird is still firmly established as a Twitter icon, the X already appears in Musk’s profile.
It is the symbol presented in a third tweet, with a short video. A white X on a black background, with the diagonal descending to the left formed by two white bands and the internal space also black.
Will we soon be saying goodbye to the Twitter bird?
Towards the farewell to the bird Larry
The new Twitter logo would therefore retire Twitter’s bluebird.
Which has a name, Larry, in honor of the great basketball player Larry Bird. Twitter was born in 2005, Larry appears in 2010 alongside the naming for two years until, in 2012, it remains the only symbol of the platform.
But what kind of bird is Larry? There are those who would have identified it as an Asian bird, the black-naped monarch, whose scientific denomination is Hypothymis azurea.
The X Obsession (and more)
With a further tweet written a few hours later, Musk shows a photo of himself with his arms in an X, and in the background an advertising panel of the Tesla Model X.
The caption of the tweet is inevitable: “I don’t know what little clues have heralded it, but I like the letter X”. And memory goes easily not only to Space X, but also to the recent announcement of the birth of xAI, an artificial intelligence company that announces itself as a competitor to OpenAI. And let’s not forget X.com, the startup founded in 1999 by a very young Elon Musk, which later became PayPal.
Behind the decision to change the Twitter logo, many have seen the desire to… distract users from some recent unpopular decisions. Like that, to mention the latest in chronological order, of limiting the number of readable posts in a day.
And yet, those who follow the character know, Elon Musk’s obsession with the letter X goes far beyond a purely formal fact.
Towards a total app
We recall that already in April the commercial name of the company had been changed from Twitter Inc to X Corp.
More generally, Elon Musk has long expressed his desire to create what has been defined as a “total app”, along the lines of the Chinese WeChat. And that it should have been called X.
Last year, the idea for App X was an alternative to acquiring Twitter if the deal didn’t pan out. Now, however, it could be a transformation, starting with the new logo. Also because, since Musk is the owner of Twitter, he seems to have done everything to make the application unwelcome to users. Which, after 15 years on the market, are now around 363 million.
While the competitor app of his archenemy Zuckerberg, or Threads, in just ten days has already reached 100 million users.