Why is Twitter changing its name? CEO Elon Musk Xplains
- Musk said the Twitter name made sense as 140 character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting, but not in his new vision of a WeChat-like super-app
- The logo change was greeted with criticism, as well as nostalgia for what had become a symbol for the social media age
Elon Musk on Monday explained his decision to strip Twitter of its famous bluebird logo as a move to remake the business into a broad platform for communications and financial transactions, a target he’s described as the everything app.
“This is not simply a company renaming itself, but doing the same thing,” Musk said about the apparently spontaneous move over the weekend to crowdsource a logo from fans and adopt it as Twitter’s new insignia.
“The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140 character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting.”
“In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world. The Twitter name does not make sense in that context, so we must bid adieu to the bird,” Musk tweeted.
Musk has talked about modelling X on WeChat, the Tencent Holdings Ltd. super-app used by most Chinese for everything from payments to messaging, along with online financial services such as consumer loans.
“You basically live on WeChat in China because it’s so usable and helpful to daily life, and I think if we can … get close to that at Twitter, it would be an immense success,” Musk told a company town hall meeting in June last year.