Twitter rebrands to X after Elon Musk reveals new logo

The billionaire unveiled plans to 'bid adieu to all the birds'

Twitter has rebranded as X after owner Elon Musk unveiled its new logo on Monday, a day after he said that the microblogging platform's bird would soon be replaced.

The billionaire tweeted an X symbol and also posted a video showing it on Monday morning.

He also replaced his profile picture with the X symbol. The official Twitter account did the same.

The move comes after Mr Musk announced through the platform that “if a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we'll make go live worldwide tomorrow”.

“And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” he said.

The billionaire has made a series of changes since his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in October.

In April, Twitter was merged with Mr Musk’s firm X Corp.

In the past, he has indicated that acquiring Twitter would be an “accelerant” for creating X, an “everything app”. He said he intended to make X similar to WeChat, China's most popular messaging service.

The logo change led to a spate of memes on Twitter, as users questioned the rationale behind replacing the bird.

Some users also suggested “restarting” Twitter all over again following Mr Musk's actions.

The changes to the platform are part of efforts aimed at boosting user experience and diversifying Twitter's revenue sources, according to Mr Musk.

Mr Musk told the BBC in April that Twitter was roughly breaking even and would become cash-flow positive in the coming quarters as advertisers return.

As part of the revamp following his takeover, Mr Musk said in May that video and voice calls were “coming soon” to the platform.

With the move, Twitter would take on other established apps that offer the same feature, most notably those from Meta Platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Twitter also said it was also moving forward with plans to introduce a payments feature, steering it towards Mr Musk's goal of tapping into new revenue streams, the Financial Times reported in January.

In December, Twitter also relaunched Twitter Blue, the platform's top-tier account, which indicates that a user is verified, as a paid subscription service.

The premium feature’s fees start at $8 a month for individuals, with joiners getting subscriber-only features including Edit Tweet, 1080p video uploads, reader mode, the coveted blue check mark and longer tweets.

The costs of keeping the ticks start at $1,000 a month for organisations, plus $50 monthly for each affiliate or employee account.

The social media platform also now also requires users to have an account and be logged in to view user profiles and tweets, a move Mr Musk claims will prevent data from being “pillaged so much”.

Meanwhile, this month, he announced that Twitter would be temporarily limiting the number of tweets people can read in a day.

The limits are at 10,000 posts per day for verified users, 1,000 posts per day for unverified users and 500 posts per day for new unverified users, Mr Musk said.

He followed that up with a Tweet encouraging users to “step away from the phone”.