Twitter rebrands to ‘X’: Tracing Elon Musk’s obsession with the letter

Billionaire Elon Musk has rebranded Twitter to ‘X’ and bid farewell to its iconic blue bird logo. He had conveyed his plans for the change on Sunday (23 July). Confirming that the micro-blogging platform will be called ‘X’, Twitter CEO, Linda Yaccarino, said earlier: “Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square.” “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine,” the former NBC Universal executive tweeted further.

According to the Tesla CEO, the domain x.com also redirects to twitter.com. Allen Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce, told Associated Press (AP) that the move is “not surprising given Musk’s long history with the name ‘X’”. Let’s trace the journey of Elon Musk’s penchant for the letter ‘X’. Back to the 1990s Musk’s fascination with the letter X goes back to one of his first ventures, which was called X.com. It was an online banking and financial services platform launched in 1999. The company later merged with a competitor to become PayPal. Ashlee Vance, the author of Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, told NPR: “Everyone tried to talk him out of naming the company that back then because of the sexual innuendos, but he really liked it and stuck with it”. Sharing excerpts from his upcoming biography on Musk, author Walter Isaacson tweeted: “His concept for X.com was grand. It would be a one-stop everything-store for all financial needs: banking, digital purchases, checking, credit cards, investments, and loans. Transactions would be handled instantly, with no waiting for payments to clear. His insight was that money is simply an entry into a database, and he wanted to devise a way that all transactions were securely recorded in real-time.”

Musk’s affinity for ‘X’ In 2017, Musk bought back the url “X.com” from PayPal. “Thanks PayPal for allowing me to buy back X.com! No plans right now, but it has great sentimental value to me,” he said in a tweet at the time. The letter X has also made it to Musk’s other ventures in some form or the other. He is the founder and CEO of the rocket company SpaceX, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corporation.

Tesla’s third model, launched in 2015, is called Model X.

Musk and his then-partner, Canadian musician Grimes, named their son X Æ A-12 Musk in 2020. However, to comply with California’s laws, the newborn’s name was later changed to X Æ A-Xii. Musk’s recent announcement for rebranding Twitter comes just weeks after he started a new company xAI, an artificial intelligence company seen as a rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. [caption id=“attachment_12907212” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Elon Musk plans to transform Twitter into X, an ’everything app’. Reuters File Photo[/caption] The website of the new company states that it “will work closely with X (Twitter), Tesla, and other companies to make progress towards our mission.” “X marks the spot in a lot of ways for Elon Musk. It’s kind of this common theme throughout,” Tim Higgins, a reporter and the author of Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century, told NPR. Twitter’s rebranding Musk had been open about his intentions of transforming Twitter into X, an “everything app” even before he acquired the platform for $44 billion on 28 October 2022. “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app,” he tweeted on 5 October last year.

According to Musk’s biographer Isaacson, the billionaire told him ahead of his Twitter takeover, “I am very excited about finally implementing X.com as it should have been done, using Twitter as an accelerant!” In April this year, a filing in a federal court case in California revealed Twitter had been renamed to X Corp, noted NPR. In the same month, Musk tweeted only the letter ‘X’ to his millions of followers. Earlier in May, welcoming Yaccarino as Twitter’s new CEO, Musk wrote, “Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app”. Musk plans to create a “super app” similar to China’s popular WeChat. WeChat offers wide-ranging services on a single platform, including messaging, ordering food, streaming and making payments. “Not sure what subtle clues gave it way, but I like the letter X,” Musk said in a tweet on Sunday. He also pinned a flickering video of ‘X’ on his handle replacing Twitter’s well-known bird logo.

As per Reuters, Musk confirmed in a Twitter Spaces audio chat on Sunday that Twitter’s logo will change, adding that “it should have been done a long time ago”.

The revamp comes at a time when Twitter has a new competitor in town, Meta’s new app, Threads, which launched earlier this month. Moreover, the latest move adds to the series of modifications introduced by Musk since acquiring the social media platform. With inputs from agencies