Elon Musk reveals rebranding of Twitter as X – and what he wants us to now call a tweet

Elon Musk has unveiled a rebranding of Twitter with a large X logo.

The company’s chief executive Linda Yaccarino appeared to confirm the change by posting an image of the icon beamed on the side of its headquarters in San Francisco, California.

“Lights. Camera. X!” she wrote.

Musk also later posted an image of the logo on the company’s HQ – and when asked what tweets would now be called, he said: “x’s”.

Asked about the new name for retweet, when someone reposts someone’s tweet on to their timeline, he said: “That whole concept should be rethought.”

It comes after the world’s richest man spent the weekend teasing an imminent rebranding of the social media platform he bought last October for $44bn (£38bn).

The official company name, Twitter Inc, had already been changed to X Corp back in April.

‘The everything app’

Musk has long spoken of his desire to launch “X, the everything app”, even before purchasing Twitter.

He has previously compared his plan with China’s WeChat, which combines familiar features like messaging, payments, a marketplace, and public posts into one place.

Ms Yaccarino appeared to confirm that was the strategy on Sunday.

“X is the future of unlimited interactivity,” she said, centred on “audio, video, messaging, payments/banking” and “powered by AI”.

Musk launched his own artificial intelligence start-up earlier this year, dubbed xAI, which would work with his existing companies – including Tesla and Twitter.

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Twitter under Elon Musk

The rebranding of Twitter marks the biggest change to the platform since Musk began his tumultuous tenure.

Among the changes have been sacking thousands of staff, locking verification checkmarks behind a paywall, reinstating banned accounts like those of Andrew Tate and Donald Trump, and applying reading limits.

His loose stance on moderation has contributed to Twitter losing almost half of its advertising revenue since he purchased the company. Musk revealed last week the firm wasn’t profitable and was in “heavy debt”.

Combined, his policies have also prompted some of the platform’s 360-400 million users to try alternatives like Bluesky – backed by former Twitter boss Jack Dorsey – and Mastodon.

Meta‘s Threads app is proving the biggest threat. It became the fastest growing app in history when it launched earlier this month, amassing 100 million users in five days.

Its tougher stance on moderation has proved appealing, but the app lacks key features like the ability to search for specific topics, hashtags, and the option to tailor your timeline to just people you follow.

Its brazen similarity to Twitter has irked Musk, who has since posted several derogatory comments about Meta’s billionaire owner Mark Zuckerberg and even threatened to sue.