Twitter changes logo to X, bids ‘adieu’ to its blue bird

Twitter owner Elon Musk said the social media company will change its logo soon, getting rid of the blue bird that’s long been its signature.

“If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make go live worldwide tomorrow,” Musk tweeted late Saturday. Roughly six months after he acquired Twitter for $44bin, he merged the company into an entity called X Corporation.

pic.twitter.com/IwcbqMnQtA

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 23, 2023

“Soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk wrote in another post.

Twitter’s brand legacy

Twitter still has a brand toolkit page on its website calling the light-blue bird its “most recognisable asset.” While that page says the company is protective of its logo and offers guidelines on how to use it, Musk apparently isn’t a fan.

https://t.co/bOUOek5Cvy now points to https://t.co/AYBszklpkE.

Interim X logo goes live later today.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 23, 2023

“It should have been done a long time ago,” he said during a brief Twitter Spaces appearance, referring to changing the logo. “We’re cutting the Twitter logo off the building with blowtorches,” he said, presumably referring to the sign he’s already altered on the company’s San Francisco headquarters.

Like this but X pic.twitter.com/PRLMMA2lYl

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 23, 2023

Musk’s many changes to Twitter so far haven’t worked out well for stakeholders. Fidelity in May marked down the value of its holding in the company by two-thirds, while Cathie Wood’s ARK Investment Management has written down its stake by 47 per cent, she told the Wall Street Journal last week.

In March, Musk suggested the company was turning a corner by making its advertising more relevant. He said Twitter had a chance to break even on a cash-flow basis in the second quarter.

That prediction was overoptimistic. Musk tweeted earlier this month that Twitter’s cash flow was still negative and blamed a roughly 50 per cent drop in advertising revenue, along with the company’s debt load.