Elon Musk's move to rebrand Twitter as X.com took the internet by storm last week. The tech mogul is obsessed with the letter X, so much so that he even went on to name one of his children X Æ A-12. He had already renamed Twitter's corporate name to X Corp. after he bought it in October.
Amid online discussions on company's rebranding, the city of San Francisco has now launched a probe into a gigantic X sign installed on top of the company's downtown headquarters.
The X appeared after San Francisco police department stopped workers from removing the brand's iconic bird logo from the side of the building on Monday, saying they hadn't taped off the sidewalk to keep pedestrians safe if anything fell.
Patrick Hannan, a spokesperson for the Department of Building Inspection, said replacing letters or symbols would require a permit to ensure consistency with the historic nature of the building and to make sure additions are safely attached to the sign. He added that erecting a sign on top of a building also requires a permit.
In April this year, Musk removed the letter ‘w’ from the ‘Twitter’ sign installed outside the headquarters, leaving the word 'Titter' to be displayed. Musk later clarified that the company was legally required to keep the ‘w’ on at the building. Hence, instead of completely removing the letter, Musk’s team painted over the blue ‘w’ in the background white colour.
“Our landlord at SF HQ says we’re legally required to keep sign as Twitter & cannot remove ‘w’, so we painted it background color. Problem solved!” Musk tweeted in April. In a later tweet, he joked, “They tried to muffle our titter.”
In December 2022, Twitter was sued by its landlord over $136,260 unpaid rent.
The same month, San Francisco's Department of Building Inspection launched a review after Musk reportedly violated the city's zoning regulations by making employees sleep in their offices overnight.
The company allegedly directed its staffers to convert rooms in the San Francisco headquarters office into “hotel rooms,” while informing inspectors and their landlord they were just “temporary rest spaces.” Back then, Musk slammed the city, saying it was attacking companies for providing beds to "tired employees".