Why is Twitter changing to X and three other questions

This article was last updated on July 25, 2023

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Why the name X?

It seems that the last days of the Twitter brand name are numbered. The well-known logo, a white bird against a blue background (or vice versa), has been replaced by the letter X. If it is up to owner Elon Musk, this is the start of many changes at Twitter. He’s been hinting at that for a long time. Not only the name of the service changes.

The answer is quite simple: you could call it Elon Musk’s favorite letter. In 1999 he founded X.com, the predecessor of payment service PayPal. Furthermore, the X is in the name of his aerospace company SpaceX and his new AI company xAI. And his son born in 2020 was named X Æ A-12, who received an extra -x after the intervention of the judge: X Æ A-Xii.

“I don’t know what subtle hint it gave, but I love the letter X,” he joked on Twitter this weekend. Accompanied by a photo showing the billionaire with his hands forming an X against banners reading “Tesla X” in the background. His profile picture on Twitter is now the image of the X and X.com refers to Twitter.com.

What do the new plans mean in practice?

Musk’s plans are not new. In October, he already said that Twitter should serve as a “springboard” for “the all-encompassing” app X. That now starts with changing the name Twitter to X, newly appointed CEO Linda Yaccarino wrote this weekend. In a number of posts, she announced that X will “transform” messaging service Twitter. According to her, X stands for “unlimited interactivity” and will deliver “everything”.

For the time being, the plans are mainly packed with marketing terms. Twitter already has a number of functions that Yaccarino mentions – such as audio, video and a messaging service. The new features are in the payment service and the marketplace. What these additions will look like is still unclear.

Are these ambitions achievable?

Building a marketplace in an app is not impossible. Instagram has a shop function, Facebook has a competitor of Marktplaats. But with these two parties, Musk immediately has enormous competition, even apart from platforms that focus purely on sales activities, such as the Dutch Marketplace.

The challenge for Musk will be to attract enough users to the app who not only come for the latest news, but also want to buy and sell products. Because why would you use Twitter or X for that? He will have to make that clear together with Yaccarino in the near future.

There is another point: finances. Depending on the implementation, the plans may require a substantial investment. But Twitter is still not in good shape. Musk himself recently said that advertising revenues have halved. On top of that, the company has huge debts. So money for investments would probably have to come from Musk’s net worth, which Bloomberg estimates at $232 billion.

Is it useful, a name change?

Changing the name of a world famous company is not without risks. Twitter has a great reputation in name and logo. Exchanging that for the general-sounding X can work as a clean slate, especially if you want to further expand the app, but it is also much less recognizable in the beginning.

Two well-known tech companies preceded Twitter in a major name change: Google became part of parent company Alphabet in 2015, and Facebook became part of Meta in 2021. Important difference with now: the brand names Google and Facebook are still there. Musk really seems to want to get rid of the Twitter brand name.

The bird Larry

The logo that is now said goodbye to was introduced in 2012. It was Twitter’s fourth logo. Back in 2014 dived The New York Times in the origin of the logo. The original, from 2006, was purchased from the iStock website for $15. The image was created by British graphic designer Simon Oxley, who was unaware of Twitter when the company chose his work as its logo. The birds were all named Larry the Bird. Named after a player of the Boston Celtics basketball club; Larry Bird.