Amid competition from Meta’s Threads, Elon Musk is changing the Twitter logo to an 'X' and doing away with the iconic blue bird. This would mark the latest major change since Musk’s takeover of the social media company in late October last year.
Earlier, Musk drew flak over the layoff of several Twitter employees and the decision to tweak the blue tick policy. As Twitter gears up to rebrand itself, here is a look at the evolution of the company’s logo.
Twitter’s original logo read ‘twittr’ and was written in a slimy, green colour. Launched in 2005, the logo survived for almost a year.
In 2006, the logo was changed to ‘twitter’ which appeared in the now recognisable light blue colour.
In 2010, the famous blue bird appeared alongside the ‘twitter’ logo. The bird was named Larry T Bird, after US basketball icon and NBA legend Larry Bird who played for the Bolton Celtics.
In 2012, the word ‘twitter’ was removed from the logo and the blue bird became the official logo of the social media giant.
The blue bird survived for about 11 years. However, the company is undergoing a major overhaul after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022. Back then, he tweeted that "buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app."
In April this year, Musk replaced the blue bird with the Dogecoin logo. However, he changed it back a few days later. Rumours claimed that the move came after Dogecoin investors filed a $258 lawsuit against Musk.
The same month, he removed the letter ‘w’ from the ‘Twitter’ sign installed outside the company’s San Francisco headquarters. Musk later clarified that the firm was legally required to keep the ‘w’ on at the building. Hence, instead of completely restoring the letter, Musk’s team painted over the ‘w’ in the background colour.
On April 18, Twitter emailed its partners: “Twitter, Inc. has been renamed to X Corp.”
On July 23, Musk tweeted, “Soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.”
Many experts feel that the change is not surprising given Musk's long history with the letter "X”. Musk's spacecraft engineering company, Space Exploration Technologies Corp., is commonly known as SpaceX. In 1999, Musk founded a startup called X.com, an online financial services company, which was an earlier version of what we know now as PayPal. In another tweet on Sunday, he said, “X.com now points to https://twitter.com/. Interim X logo goes live later today.” Another tweet by Musk read, “Not sure what subtle clues gave it way, but I like the letter X”.
Linda Yaccarino, who has been heading Twitter since May, posted on Twitter, “It's an exceptionally rare thing in life or in business that you get a second chance to make another big impression. Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square."
Yaccarino tweeted that X would be "the future state of unlimited interactivity centred in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities."