Musk to ‘Bid Adieu’ to Twitter’s Longtime Bird Logo

Twitter’s iconic bird logo could soon fly the coop.

Owner Elon Musk said Sunday (July 23) that the social media platform would soon swap the blue bird that’s been its symbol since its inception to an “X.”

“If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make [it] go live worldwide tomorrow,” the multibillionaire wrote on Twitter, where he also shared and pinned the image of the bird logo changing into an X.

“Soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk added. 

He also held a poll for users about changing Twitter’s platform color to black. As of 5 p.m. Eastern time Sunday, users were leaning towards Yes, 78% to 22%.

The switch isn’t just Musk choosing a random letter. X is technically Twitter’s corporate name, and the name of Musk’s planned “everything app” that the Tesla-Twitter-Starlink owner wants to someday rival PayPal.

However, a report Sunday by The Wall Street Journal noted that Musk’s decision to rebrand marks a deviation from how most marketers try to protect widely known brands and logos.

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense to replace a globally recognized brand with a generic placeholder symbol,” said Jason Goldman, a former head of product at Twitter who has criticized Musk’s leadership of the company.

According to that report, Twitter’s bird logo was first designed in 2006, and has been redesigned multiple times over the years.

Musk released plans for his “everything app” in April, saying he imagined Twitter’s valuation ballooning to $250 billion.

As PYMNTS wrote at the time — months before the company saw its ad revenue plunge — there could be a long way to go for Twitter to reach that goal, arguing, “It may be one thing to attempt being the go-to super app and quite another to fulfill that goal.”

Consumers expect quite a lot from these potential providers, as revealed in the PYMNTS collaboration with PayPal, “The Super App Shift: How Consumers Want to Save, Shop and Spend in The Connected Economy.”

Of a super app’s benefits included in the survey, 10 out of 11 features received a “very or extremely interested” by more than 50% of consumer respondents. And with only two of these features directly related to payments services, 

“Musk may have his work cut out for him to seamlessly and successfully offer most (or even many) of the additional features,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this year. “One big obstacle facing X’s plan is the trust factor, as over half of consumers trust their financial institutions most to provide a safe super app.”