Twitter users are sending off the blue bird in style, flooding the platform with memes and mockery after owner Elon Musk announced he was rebranding it as “X.”
Musk revealed Sunday he planned to change the company’s bird logo to an “X,” in yet another dramatic and poorly received change to the social media platform since he bought it for $44 billion last year. The logo on the site changed early on Monday.
He unveiled the new logo ― the letter X with one stroke thicker than the other ― on Sunday night and shared a photo of it projected onto the company’s headquarters.
Linda Yaccarino, the former NBC Universal executive Musk appointed as Twitter CEO in May, lauded the move, writing: “Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square.”
Musk has a long-documented fixation on the letter X. He owns a rocket company known as SpaceX, and in 1999 founded a startup called X.com, which became the popular online payment company PayPal. He named a Tesla SUV the Model X. He and singer Grimes also share a child named X Æ A-12.
Last year, he said the purchase of Twitter “is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.”
Under Musk’s ownership, the company laid off a majority of its staff, lost many of its advertisers, and allowed an increase in hate speech and the return of users banned for misconduct. In a May corporate filing, asset manager Fidelity valued Twitter at roughly a third of what Musk paid for it.
“GoodbyeTwitter” was trending on Monday morning as users farewelled the globally recognized brand as they once knew it ― complete with its own verbs, to “tweet” and “retweet” ― and offered quintessentially Twitter-style commentary on the change: