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Elon Musk on Monday explained his decision to strip Twitter of its famous blue-bird logo as a move to remake the business into a broad platform for communications and financial transactions, a target he’s described as the everything app.
“This is not simply a company renaming itself, but doing the same thing,” Musk said about the apparently spontaneous move over the weekend to crowdsource a logo from fans and adopt it as Twitter’s new insignia.
“The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140 character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting.”
Twitter was acquired by X Corp both to ensure freedom of speech and as an accelerant for X, the everything app. This is not simply a company renaming itself, but doing the same thing.
The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140 character messages going back and forth – like…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2023
The billionaire owner’s envisioned X app — which will connect Twitter’s underlying infrastructure with x.com, a web address that now functions as a routing service to Twitter — is one that layers communication, multimedia and “the ability to conduct your entire financial world.”
In messages posted in support of Musk’s overhaul, Twitter Chief Executive Officer Linda Yaccarino said X would include fintech features like payments and banking. A recent arrival at the company, Yaccarino has the task of restoring trust with advertisers and users alike following a series of abrupt and seemingly arbitrary changes executed by Musk.
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.
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayacc) July 23, 2023
Musk has talked about modeling X on WeChat, the Tencent Holdings Ltd. super-app used by the majority of Chinese for everything from payments to messaging, along with online financial services such as consumer loans.