Elon Musk announces farewell to 'All the Birds'

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
23 Jul 2023 10:47

The Tesla and Twitter CEO has posted an image of a flickering "X" but did not provide further details.

A phone screen displays a photo of Elon Musk with the Twitter logo shown in the background, in Washington, October 4, 2022. (AFP)

Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Twitter, recently tweeted about changing the platform's logo. He stated that they will say goodbye to the Twitter brand and gradually phase out the bird symbol.

Musk posted an image of a flickering "X" but did not provide further details. He mentioned that if a good enough "X" logo is suggested, they will make it live worldwide the following day.

During his tenure as Twitter's owner, Musk renamed the company to X Corp, intending to transform it into a "super app" similar to China's WeChat. Twitter's current logo, featuring a blue bird, is considered the company's most recognizable asset, and they are protective of it.

And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 23, 2023

In the past, Twitter temporarily replaced the bird logo with Dogecoin's Shiba Inu dog, which significantly increased the meme coin's market value by up to $4 billion.

The company is facing challenges, including a lawsuit filed against them, claiming that they owe at least $500 million in severance pay to former employees.

As a cost-cutting measure, Musk's company has already laid off more than half of Twitter's workforce since he acquired the company in October.

Twitter's Worsening Crisis

Insider Intelligence, a market research company, has recently reported that Twitter is expected to make less than $3 billion in 2023, down around one-third year on year since 2022.

Simultaneously, Musk has attempted to draw revenues from the app by instituting an $11 per month payment from verified accounts. Moreover, he recently announced that users' Twitter views will be limited, which would restrict the time they could spend on the app while giving verified accounts the greater luxury of viewing larger amounts of tweets per day.

The tycoon's announcement was followed by the launch of Threads by major rival Meta, as Mark Zuckerberg and his team look to take advantage of Twitter's crisis by drawing its users' toward their free-to-use app.

It is estimated that the Bird app holds around 200 million regular users, however, continuous technical failures due to overcrowding of the app's servers have put Musk under the spotlight.

The world's richest, who also owns Tesla and Space X, threatened to sue Meta, saying they stole trade secrets and intellectual property, claims which Meta denies.