Photo credit: X
Elon Musk is renaming Twitter the “X,” a mysterious addition that might seem spontaneous but has fascinated Twitter’s new owner for years.
Musk began tweeting about a possible name change late on July 24, saying X is the new name. “Soon we will say goodbye to the Twitter brand and gradually to all birds,” his tweet reads. In another, he states, “If a good enough X logo is released tonight, we’ll release it globally tomorrow.” He spent the next few hours chatting on Twitter with people suggesting alternatives to the “X” logo for his rebrand.
According to a report by The edgeMusk sent one E-mail to Twitter staff announcing the change. He stated that it was the last time they received an email from the twitter.com domain. Musk has been fascinated by the letter X for decades and has adorned several of his projects with it over the years. But the X.com domain has always been his white whale – the one that got away.
X.com was the original name for PayPal before it was ousted by Peter Thiel’s management team, who thought a rebrand was a pretty silly idea for a company that inspired people to use its name as a verb. “PayPal me the cash” was as common on eBay exchanges as “Have you seen the latest tweet?”
Elon Musk bought back the X.com domain from PayPal in 2017 for an undisclosed sum. It remained unused until recently and is now being redirected to Twitter.com. Musk has hinted that the Twitter.com domain will eventually cease to exist and be taken over by X.com — wiping out the Bluebird branding and one of the largest social media presences on the web for good.
It’s unclear how this will affect promotions on the new site, whether the twitter.com domain will continue to be redirected, or how this will be handled. It seems Musk is intent on ditching the bird branding for good, as he told a number of Twitter Spaces listeners that he plans to use blowtorches to burn the bird off the side of the building.