X in, bird out: Elon Musk rebrands Twitter logo, here is the story in 5 points

Twitter users in India woke up to a mysterious tweet by Elon Musk on Sunday morning. The billionaire asked people to prepare to say goodbye to the beloved Twitter logo and gradually, ‘all the birds’ as a rebranding of the micro-blogging was going to take place soon. Even though such a move came out of the blue, it surely wasn’t unexpected as rumours of Musk planning a full rebrand of Twitter had been floating on the internet for quite some time.

Twitter’s rebranding into X has already begun, and the social media site’s official handle no longer has changed its display name to ‘X’. The iconic blue bird logo in the profile picture has also been replaced by X and the handle’s bio has also been tweaked.

With X, Musk is hoping to create a super app of sorts that can do a lot more than merely being a social media platform for interactions.

So what is happening at Twitter and why is Musk rebranding it to X? Here is the full story, in five points.

1. Twitter's rebranding and Musk's announcement

Talking about rebranding Twitter, Musk wrote in a tweet on Sunday, “And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.” In another tweet, he added that if they are able to find a good enough logo, it will be made live soon.

And looks like the team did find a good logo as Musk pinned a video of the X logo on his Twitter profile. Later, he changed his profile picture to display the logo. Twitter CEO Yaccarino also shared a picture of the logo and wrote, “X is here! Let’s do this.”

2. X.com redirecting to Twitter

In a separate tweet, Musk added that the domain X.com will now redirect users to Twitter. And indeed, if you type X.com on your web browser, the Twitter website will load. This makes us wonder if the domain Twitter.com will cease to exist in future and be replaced by X.com.

Even Twitter’s official handle is no longer known by the blue bird. The X logo has replaced the bird and the handle’s display name also says X. The bio reads, ‘What’s happening?’

3. Story of X corp

In April this year, a document submitted in a court in California hinted that Twitter no longer exists as an independent entity. The company had been merged into X Corp.

"Twitter Inc. has been merged into X Corp. and no longer exists. X Corp. is a privately held corporation, incorporated in Nevada, and with its principal place of business in San Francisco, California," the document read. The merger was submitted on March 15 and according to the filings, Musk is the president of the company as well as of its parent, X Holdings Corp, that was created in March as well.

4. Nostalgic connection

The name X.com reportedly has a nostalgic connection for Musk. As per an Insider report, X.com was an online banking company that Musk had started back in 1990. The company was eventually merged with Confinity, a financial startup cofounded by Peter Thiel, to form PayPal. Even though Musk was the CEO of the newly-formed PayPal, he was fired by the board while he was on a vacation in Australia. Thiel became the new CEO. A Forbes report had said that the reason behind Musk’s firing was that he had started a huge fight amongst the co-founders of PayPal over shifting their servers from the Unix operating system to Microsoft’s Windows.

5. Subtle hints along the way

Musk has time and again expressed his desire about creating an 'everything' app, X, that can emerge as a go-to app for various needs of the user. Shortly after buying Twitter, he had written on the micro-blogging site, “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.”

As per a New York Times report that dates back to October 2022, Musk had revealed plans of a new product called X and aimed that it would have 104 million users by 2028.

Other reports revealed that Musk had earlier said that he could be inspired by China’s WeChat. A Business Insider report quoted Musk saying in May that WeChat can do everything and combines apps like Twitter, PayPal, and a ‘bunch of things’ into one (app). “It's really an excellent app, and we don't have anything like that outside of China,” he had added.

In 2020, Musk had appreciated the idea from a Tesla investor to create a holding company called X for his various ventures.