Behind Elon Musk’s Move To Rebrand Twitter, A Fascination With ‘X’

The Tesla CEO has a well-documented habit of naming things with the letter X.

New Delhi:

Twitter’s iconic blue bird logo, a symbol of the platform for over a decade, is set to be replaced by an “X” logo, Elon Musk announced on Sunday. “X dot com now points to Twitter dot com. Interim X logo goes live later today,” tweeted Mr Musk.

Mr Musk has repeatedly expressed his ambition to develop a “one-stop shop” app that would integrate the features of social media and payment apps, similar to China’s WeChat, owned by the Chinese tech giant Tencent.

WeChat is a staple in Chinese society, with over 1 billion users relying on it for a wide range of tasks, from social media and messaging to ordering food and paying for cabs. It is so essential to everyday life that it is often referred to as “the app for everything”. 

Mr Musk has previously stated that his controversial acquisition of Twitter last year was “an accelerant to creating X, the everything app”.

The SpaceX and Tesla chief’s fascination with the letter X goes back to the 1990s. But why is the 52-year-old so obsessed with the 24th letter of the English alphabet? 

In 1999, Mr Musk launched the X.com domain, an online banking services platform that is a precursor to PayPal. In 2017, Mr Musk repurchased the X.com domain and it was kept as one of his unused assets until his big announcement on Twitter’s future on Sunday. 

Following the purchase, Mr Musk tweeted that the domain carries a lot of “sentimental value” for him, possibly a homage to his early entrepreneurial days. 

Thanks PayPal for allowing me to buy back https://t.co/bOUOejO16Y! No plans right now, but it has great sentimental value to me.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 11, 2017

The Tesla CEO has a well-documented habit of naming things with the letter X. His company SpaceX, his electric car the Model X, and even one of his children, X AE A-XII, all include the letter X in their names.

Mr Musk has already named Twitter’s parent company the X Corporation. “If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make (it) go live worldwide tomorrow,” he tweeted on Sunday.

He further mentioned that Twitter’s new emblem should be Art Deco-style and that posts on the site would be called “an X” under the new identity.

Earlier this month, Mr Musk launched his own artificial intelligence company, xAI, aiming to challenge OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. He said that the new artificial intelligence company will operate independently from his other businesses, however, xAI’s innovations could be beneficial to those businesses, such as Twitter.

And the way things are proceeding, many believe that eventually, X Corporation could integrate several of Mr Musk’s ventures, including Twitter, under one banner.