By Jack Phillips
Elon Musk says he plans to change Twitter’s blue bird logo to an “X,” in what would be another major change to the social media platform he purchased last year.
Mr. Musk said that he’s looking to make the change worldwide as soon as July 24.
“Soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” he wrote in a series of posts on his Twitter account starting just after midnight New York time on July 23. Mr. Musk said that the change “should have been done a long time ago.”
Mr. Musk posted a photo of himself on July 23 making an “X” sign with his hands with the message: “Not sure what subtle clues gave it way [sic], but I like the letter X.”
Since Mr. Musk bought Twitter last year for $44 billion, the firm has changed its business name to X Corp., which reflects the multibillionaire’s plan to create a “super app” in the West, akin to WeChat in China.
Earlier this month, Mr. Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla, put new curfews on his digital town square, a move met with sharp criticism that it could drive away more advertisers and undermine its cultural influence as a trendsetter. The higher tweet-viewing threshold is part of an $8-per-month subscription service that the company rolled out earlier this year in an attempt to boost Twitter revenue.
Revenue has dropped sharply since Mr. Musk took over the company and laid off roughly three-fourths of its workforce to slash costs and avoid bankruptcy. He recently said Twitter is dealing with a “heavy debt load” after it lost about 50 percent of its advertisers.
“We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50 percent drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load. Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else,” he wrote on Twitter earlier this month.
Competition
Mr. Musk’s move to change Twitter’s logo to an “X” also comes as Meta this month rolled out a new app. Threads had been seen as an alternative for those who have been souring on Twitter.
Threads is billed as a text-based version of Meta’s photo-sharing app Instagram that the company has said offers “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations.”
However, user engagement on Threads has cratered in recent weeks, after it announced that 100 million users signed up after about a week. In the meantime, analytics company Sensor Tower found that the app has lost about 70 percent of its daily users, and only some 13 million people are using it on a daily basis.
Threads users spend about 4 minutes on the site on average per day, while Twitter users average about 30 minutes per day, according to the firm.
“These early returns signal that despite the hoopla during its launch, it will still be an uphill climb for Threads to carve out space in most users’ social network routine,” Anthony Bartolacci, managing director at marketing intelligence firm Sensor Tower, told CNBC in June. “The backing of Meta and the integration with Instagram likely gives Threads a much higher flood than other services, but it will need a more compelling value proposition than simply ‘Twitter, but without Elon Musk.’”
But Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently issued a Threads post saying the company is focusing on stabilizing first before growing its user base.
Since the app was launched in early July, there have been concerns about censorship. Some users already reported having their accounts’ reach restricted in the days after Threads made its debut.
“When Mark Zuckerberg—the owner of Meta, Facebook, Threads, and WhatsApp—announced Threads, he said it would be a free and open platform,” investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger wrote in a post. “Well, right away, there were users who showed that they had been censored.”
Conservative commentator Rogan O’Hanley, who goes by the handle @DC-Draino on Twitter, also claimed that he had been flagged for censorship on Threads after he had “posted once about wanting to expose [President Joe] Biden’s corrupt government.”
A screenshot shared by Mr. O’Hanley appeared to show a warning message that was applied to his Threads account for anyone who wants to follow him. The message reads, “This account has repeatedly posted false information that was reviewed by independent fact-checkers or went against our Community Guidelines.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
