© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: The Twitter logo and image of Elon Musk are viewed through a magnifier in this illustration taken October 27, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration // File Photo
Written by Marinemay Day and Michelle Conlin
(Reuters) – Twitter owner Elon Musk signaled on Sunday that he would do more to move the social media company in a new direction by rebranding it to replace the blue bird X’s logo, after recognizing that advertisers are slow to come back.
The change, which was not visible on the site Sunday afternoon, follows Musk’s recent admission that ad revenue is still roughly half of what it was before. Twitter’s cash flow was negative as a result of this and its heavy debt burden.
“The Interim X logo goes live later today,” Musk said on Twitter, adding that “X.com” will now redirect to the Twitter website. Musk’s X Corp owns Twitter.
The billionaire said in a post on Sunday that he wants to change the Twitter logo and polled millions of followers on whether they would prefer changing the site’s color scheme from blue to black. Post a stylized X image on an outer space-themed black background.
“And soon we will be introducing the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” he said. The company said it would comment on changes later.
Under Musk’s tumultuous period since he bought Twitter in October, the company changed its business name to X Corp, reflecting the billionaire’s vision of creating a “super app” like China’s WeChat.
In April, Twitter’s old blue bird logo was temporarily replaced with a dog, which helped increase the cryptocurrency’s market cap.
The company drew widespread criticism from users and marketing professionals when Musk announced early this month that Twitter would limit the number of tweets different accounts could read per day.
The daily limits helped the competing theme service owned by Meta Platforms, which surpassed 100 million subscriptions within five days of its launch on July 5.
