'Users are not going to love that' - Analysts comment on Twitter rebrand

Twitter sign starts coming down at headquarters for X rebranding

The familiar Twitter letting started coming down at the company's San Francisco headquarters on Monday, as part of a new rebranding.

After 17 years with an iconic blue bird logo that came to symbolize the broadcasting of ideas to the world, billionaire Elon Musk renamed Twitter as X and unveiled a new logo, marking a focus on building an "everything app."

Since taking over Twitter in October, Musk has said he envisions an app that could offer a variety of services to users beyond social media, such as peer-to-peer payments, an idea that mirrors the widely popular WeChat app in China.

Since Musk's takeover, the company has faced tumultuous times with layoffs, a sharp drop in advertisers and the meteoric rise of Threads, Meta's response to Twitter.

"From a brand or business point of view, it's completely irrational," said Allen Adamson, co-founder of Metaforce, a brand and marketing company. " It's probably the final strike in the complete unwinding of Twitter, and likely going to be good for Elon Musk because now people will be talking about his X vision, not how much money he's going to be losing on Twitter."

Earlier in the day, Elon Musk and Twitter chief executive officer Linda Yaccarino unveiled a logo for the social media platform that featured a white X on a black background as a replacement for the familiar blue bird symbol.

"X is here! Let's do this," tweeted Yaccarino, who also posted a picture of the logo projected onto the company's offices in San Francisco.

"I think initially it detracts from the value in terms of, you know, it could be a black eye for Twitter if advertisers ultimately push back," said Dan Ives, managing director at Wedbush Securities, who covered Twitter stock before Musk took the company private. "When you lose an iconic logo like that, re-brands are dangerous, and, you know, clearly back against the wall for Twitter, and you're seeing that rebrand from start to finish, but I think, kneejerk, this probably detracts from the value that you lose the iconic Twitter birdie."

Weeks before completing his Twitter acquisition last year Musk had said that buying the company would speed up his ambition to create an "everything app" called X by three to five years.

It's easier said than done, said Ives.

"It feels like an uphill battle to get this successful in the beginning, could ultimately get there, but it's going to take billions in terms of resources," said Ives. "We'll call this a good first start, but definitely a lot of wood to chop at."

It doesn't make sense from a branding perspective, added Adamson.

"X is a completely generic brand name. It's a letter in the alphabet," said Adamson. "He can't own it. It means nothing to consumers. It's going to take him a long time to build a product that will meet his vision."

"I am sad": Designer of original Twitter logo say blue bird represented internet's "adolescence"

One of the three designers behind the iconic Twitter logo said he's "sad" seeing the original blue bird be replaced.

Martin Grasser, an artist and designer based in San Francisco spoke to Reuters via Zoom, after posting a viral thread, where he shared memories about how the logo was created.

"We found this really cool little round form sort of in the belly of the bird, and we started taking that into the computer and quickly learned that like the method of construction really had a conceptual underpinning that worked for, you know, both the platform and the way the logo could be drawn. And so we used 13 circles of three different sized circles, 13 in total overlapping to render the bird that ended up being selected for the final, for the final logo."

"And I think in a lot of ways it represents the best of the internet's adolescence. That's sort of what I was thinking about last night, like, why do people like this? Why is there a affinity for it? And I think that it recalls a time when we, a lot of people I don't mean this to sound cynical, but believed more in the power of the Internet. And I think we hadn't been, we were still more hopeful and optimistic about the role that technology could play in our life."

Musk said in a post on Sunday he wanted to change Twitter's logo and polled his millions of followers on whether they would favour changing the site's colour scheme from blue to black.

Reuters