Elon Musk, owner of the bluebird brand, has changed the name and logo of the Twitter social network to the letter X.

Why "X"?

What you need to know is that the letter X is no stranger to the billionaire. It refers to the online bank 'x.com', created by Elon Musk in 1999, which later became 'Paypal' following its merger with the start-up Confinity. When he bought the brand in October 2022, Elon Musk tweeted: "The acquisition of Twitter is an accelerator to create X, the all-purpose application".

In other words, he had a clear vision of what he wanted to do with the brand. According to Linda Yaccarino, Twitter's current CEO, "X will be the platform that can do... just about everything".

In this sense, the new application could be similar to WeChat, developed by the Chinese company Tencent, which is used for messaging, paying bills, using public transport and keeping your driving licence, among other things.

How has this transformation been received ?

The decision to change the company's name has caused a lot of ink to flow, with market analysts calling it a mistake that will cost the company several billion dollars. However, it's hard to be precise about the exact figure, with some saying between 4 and 20 billion dollars.

For the moment, Twitter is in a transitional phase. Work has begun to remove the brand's letters from the facade of the headquarters building in San Francisco. While it is true that most smartphone applications still bear the effigy of the famous blue bird, Elon Musk has promised to adapt the vocabulary and certain current functions such as "tweet, retweet" to the social network that is currently being downloaded.

Vanessa Ntoh