Elon Musk is once again making a useless change, and Twitter will no longer be known by its alias, « The Bird App. »
Musk announced that the app would change its brand’s iconic logo to an ‘X’ in a series of tweets fashioned with his classic cryptic-but-still-lame vibe, including one tweet that just showed off a shiny X. Eventually, he tweeted that « soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds. » He followed that up with his vision for the X.
This isn’t a huge surprise, as Musk has made sillier and more damaging changes to Twitter and he is obsessed with the letter X. He changed the name of Twitter’s parent company to X Corp. He started launched an AI startup called xAI. He said buying Twitter would be part of his team to build « X, the everything app. » There is a Tesla Model X car, and he famously named one of his children X AE A-XII.
But it is kind of a wild thing to do. The bird is one of the most recognizable parts of the app. The word « tweet » doesn’t make sense without the bird; the egg profile photos are bizarre without it; the bird is integral to the name Twitter itself. It’s arguably one of the biggest marketing decisions he’s made since buying the platform for $44 billion last year — according to Fidelity, Twitter is now worth one-third what Musk paid.
While most Twitter users don’t appear angry at the decision, many have reacted with a variety of « WTF is this? » and « Why? » responses.
The change could go into effect as soon as Monday, but, as with all of Musk’s seemingly random decisions, don’t hold your breath.
