Twitter owner Elon Musk on Sunday signalled he would do more to take the social media company in a new direction with a rebranding that will replace its well-known blue bird logo with an X after acknowledging advertisers have been slow to return.
The change, which was not evident on the website on Sunday
evening, followed Musk's recent admission that advertising revenue remains
nearly half of what it once was. And Twitter's cash flow has been negative as a
result of that and its heavy debt load.
Mike Proulx, research director at Forrester, said on Sunday
that the move would further alienate Twitter's original, and once fiercely
loyal, user base.
"On the one hand, you can make the argument he would be
getting rid of an iconic brand. On the other hand, he is signalling it is a new
day for what was once Twitter and that the company is heading in a different
direction with a different user base."
The billionaire Musk said in a Sunday post he wanted to
change Twitter's logo and polled his millions of followers whether they would
favour changing the site's colour scheme from blue to black. He posted a
picture of a stylized X against a black outer space-themed background.
"And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and,
gradually, all the birds," he said.
Late Sunday afternoon, Twitter's new CEO, Linda Yaccarino,
tweeted: "It's an exceptionally rare thing – in life or in business – that
you get a second chance to make another big impression. Twitter made one
massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further,
transforming the global town square."
Under Musk's tumultuous tenure since he bought Twitter in
October, the company has changed its business name to X Corp, reflecting the
billionaire's vision to create a "super app" like China's WeChat.
Change default platform color to black
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 23, 2023
In April, Twitter's legacy blue bird logo was temporarily
replaced by Dogecoin's Shiba Inu dog, helping drive a surge in the
cryptocurrency's market value.
The company came under widespread criticism from users and
marketing professionals when Musk announced early this month that Twitter would
limit how many tweets per day various accounts can read.
The daily limits helped Meta Platforms-owned rival service
Threads, which crossed 100 million sign-ups within five days of its July 5
launch. -Reuters