Since 2012, Twitter has had a well-defined mascot advertising the internet’s town square. Cultural osmosis has taught you exactly what its bluebird represents alongside the meaning of a tweet, retweet, and post. Ubiquitous branding like this obviously can’t be purchased and has to be cultivated from years of success and societal impact. But the buyer of Twitter and destroyer of quality, billionaire Elon Musk, disagreed and has decided to go for a Twitter rebrand.
In all his almighty knowledge, Musk decided that the instantly recognizable bird is a dead meme and needs to go. On July 23, he tweeted that soon he would “bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds” before later tweeting a reveal for his new version of his $44 billion acquisition—X.
With an X projected on the side of the former Twitter headquarters, we are all left to wonder why any of this Twitter rebrand is even happening and what dangers are hiding beneath the surface, especially for Twitter content creators.
X seems to be Musk’s attempt to reshape Twitter into his image while doing away with the attributes that made the site successful to begin with. Musk has been hinting since the purchase that he wants to create an “everything app” called X, even changing Twitter Inc’s legal name in April to X Corp. He wants X to be a social media platform, messaging system, and even a banking app
Musk tweeted on Sunday that the company’s visual rebranding is meant “to embody the imperfections in us all that make us unique. However, the latest step towards his X-unified vision is sucking the color and magic out of Twitter. The blue bird logo on the upper left has been replaced with a bland “X” logo that a first-year marketing student would be embarrassed to hand in as homework. …
