Twitter owner Elon Musk explained the rebrand of the social media platform to X on Monday, saying the original name no longer made sense as he has continued to add new features.
“This is not simply a company renaming itself, but doing the same thing,” Musk wrote in response to another user, who included Twitter among a long list of well-known companies that have changed their names.
“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,” he said.
Musk added that Twitter plans to include “comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world” to the platform in the coming months.
“The Twitter name does not make sense in that context, so we must bid adieu to the bird,” he said.
The billionaire owner of SpaceX and Tesla announced the rebrand Sunday, saying Twitter would incorporate an X into its logo and eliminate “all the birds.”
More on the social media platform’s rebrand
- Elon Musk says tweets are to be called ‘X’s’ now
- Twitter rebrands with X logo after Musk vow to eliminate ‘all the birds’
- Elon Musk reveals new ‘X’ logo to replace Twitter’s blue bird
While the new logo has begun appearing on the desktop version of the platform and has been adopted by Musk and Twitter’s various official accounts, the bird logo remained on the platform’s mobile version as of Tuesday morning.
Musk has instituted several controversial changes to Twitter since acquiring the social media company for $44 billion last fall.
Most recently, the platform has limited the number of direct messages unverified users can send, as well as the number of posts that nonpaying users can view.