Elon Musk says he’s about to make one of the most visible changes to Twitter since he took control of the social media company last fall: replacing its widely recognized bird logo.
In a tweet early Sunday morning Eastern, Mr. Musk that “soon we will bid on the twitter brand and, little by little, all the birds.”
He added a few moments later, “If there’s a good X logo posted tonight,” it “will go live worldwide tomorrow.”
“X” is a term for what Mr. described. Musk as an “everything” that can combine social media, instant messaging and payment services, similar to the popular Chinese app WeChat.
Mr. Musk was said that buying Twitter was “an accelerant in the creation of X,” and that the corporate entity he created to buy and control Twitter was called X Holdings.
Mr. spoke. Musk in a Twitter audio livestream earlier Sunday to say he was changing Twitter’s logo. “It should have been done a long time ago,” he said. “Sorry if it took so long.”
After a few hours, Mr. Musk in an email to Twitter employees that “we are really changing X” and that it is happening “right now.” “This is my last message from a Twitter email,” he wrote, before signing off with a salute emoji.
Mr. Musk has few constraints on making such changes at the company after it was taken private as part of his takeover of the firm. But he could still face resistance from the banks that lent him billions of dollars and the private investors he brought into the deal, which could raise concerns about shedding one of Twitter’s most visible assets.
The company saw its advertising revenue decline amid the departure of sales executives and concerns that the site has become more prone to problematic content. It now faces a well-funded rival in Threads, the recently introduced Twitter-like service from Meta, the owner of Facebook.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Musk has a long affinity for the letter X. In 1999, he founded the X.com, an online bank, and later merged it with another start-up to create PayPal. In 2017, he said he was bought back the X.com domain from PayPal.
Mr. doesn’t always follow. Musk his public statements, as when he tweeted that the company will create a content moderation council to judge what kind of speech is acceptable on the site.
But he went on to change certain Twitter practices, such as ending free verification of the accounts of prominent users, indicated by the white-and-blue check mark, and instead charging users a subscription fee for the check mark.