Twitter’s transformation to X has officially begun. Here’s all your questions answered
Elon Musk has kickstarted the process of making Twitter an “everything app”, phase one of which is an official rebrand to X.
Yesterday evening, Musk announced the rebrand with the following tweet:
For avid followers of the Elon Twitter saga, this is hardly surprising. Back in April, we reported that Musk filed a legal action to shut down Twitter as a company, merging it into his own organisation, X Corp.
Now Musk has put his plans into action, with the X.com URL now redirecting to Twitter.com. Twitter’s display name is X on the official Twitter account, but the handle remains the same.
The X logo, which Musk has said is temporary, is also the profile picture and organisation badge for Musk’s account and a number of other affiliated accounts, such as CEO Linda Yaccarino and the official accounts for Creators and Verified.
It’s also appearing on user feeds at the top of the desktop menu. Plus, Musk has suggested the app’s default colour will change from blue to black, and has stated a tweet will now be called an X.
The end goal is for Twitter to be an “everything app” – that, much like China’s WeChat, will be a go-to app for almost every aspect of our social and digital lives.
Here’s what Yaccarino said on the matter:
So what does this mean for brands?
Musk’s future plans are primarily concerned with payments. He hopes to make Twitter – or X, as it’s now known – “the biggest financial institution in the world”.
As such, we could see more sophisticated payment integrations, such as money transfers akin to PayPal or CashApp.
Soon you could be offering customers the ability to book and pay for things like transport, online shopping and banking, event tickets and holidays – all through the X app.
Our Twitter – now X- contact shared some insider info:
“Today, the rebranding of X has no material impact on Twitter advertisers. It’s business as usual.
Our focus is growing brands and strengthening their business. The advertising community should be excited by today’s announcement, and stands to be one of the greatest benefactors.”
We asked our creator director Stefan Evans for his thoughts:
“Elon Musk needs to get over his ‘X’.
“Although Meta’s Threads initial hype has dissipated, user-ship is still increasing gradually. Over on ‘X.com’ this move by Musk would seem to be nothing more than noise. An attempt to keep Twitter being talked about.
“Elon’s “everything app” is giving him tunnel vision. It might be what he thinks is best for the app’s future, but right now Twitter’s drastic changes are a detriment to user experience.
“A new logo and domain can’t solve the growing list of issues with the social network.”
Whatever’s in the future for X, keep this story on your radar.
