Twitter rebrands! Now named X. Here’s what it means.

The internet is abuzz as the app formerly known as Twitter announced a name change over the weekend. X.com now redirects to Twitter.com, although the social media platform still invites users to “tweet.” 

The rebrand is another step in the ongoing transformation of Twitter, an online watering hole for hyper-connected people that aspires to become an app that can do “everything,” according to CEO Linda Yaccarino.

“Twitter was acquired by X Corp both to ensure freedom of speech and as an accelerant for X, the everything app,” the company’s owner, billionaire Elon Musk, posted on Monday.

“The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140 character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting – but now you can post almost anything, including several hours of video. In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world.”

Here’s what the shift means for X as Musk seeks to reinvent Twitter, which he bought in 2022 for $44 billion. 

What will the app do now?

Musk has been vocal about his goal of turning Twitter into a so-called super-app, something akin to China’s WeChat. For now there’s no American equivalent to such an app, but industry experts imagine an app that encompasses basically anything a person wants to do online. 

“Consumers of the app can do a lot of different things on the platform, whether it’s listen to a podcast, shop, watch videos,” said Nii Ahene, chief strategy officer of marketing firm Tinuiti.

What’s with the letter X?

Musk appears to have a longstanding fixation on the letter X, dubbing his very first startup X.com. (After a merger, the app became PayPal, although Musk reportedly pushed for it to keep the name X, according to biographer Walter Isaacson.) After buying Twitter, Musk reportedly texted Isaacson that he was “very excited about finally implementing X.com as it should have been done, using Twitter as an accelerant!”

The letter X surfaces throughout Musk’s other endeavors as well, including his space-exploration venture SpaceX,  his recently launched artificial-intelligence app xAI and the Model X, one of electric car company Tesla’s earliest models. Musk even refers to his son with singer Grimes, by the name X.

“It’s just X, the letter X,” he said on the Joe Rogan Experience recently, explaining how to pronounce  his son X Æ A-XII’s name.

Musk regained ownership of X.com six years ago. He formally changed Twitter’s legal name to X Corp in April. Over the weekend, X.com was redirected to Twitter.com, and on Monday a crane began to remove Twitter’s iconic bird logo from the company’s San Francisco headquarters. However, police stopped the work soon after it began.

What does this mean for Twitter?

For now, the platform’s rebrand is just a name change — no new features have been introduced, staying true to Musk’s apparent preferred product strategy of hype first, delivery much later.https://650ca8f29f53f85cafcf9adc6bb2ab9f.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html?n=0

But the name change suggests Musk is likely to keep control of the company for the near future, said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh. After Musk’s takeover in April of 2022, some observers believed the billionaire could make some changes to Twitter and quickly flip it to a different owner, Singh said.

“That option is off the table now given the name change — I don’t think there’s any other prospective buyer who will take it now,” he said.