Twitter changes its name and logo: but why “X”?

He announced this the day before. On Sunday, July 23, Elon Musk pinned a video to the top of his Twitter account showing the transition from the blue bird logo to a stylized white X on a black background. At the same time, the new general manager of the social network Linda Iaccarino posted a photo from the headquarters of Twitter in San Francisco, whose facade was crossed out by a giant cross. Finally, on Monday morning, social media users were able to see how the bird disappeared, replaced by this single letter, mysterious among all.

This shift from bluebird to “X” marks a step in the metamorphosis of the social network that began as soon as the latter was acquired by a billionaire in October 2022. The company is indeed now called “X Corp”, since last April. The logo change is just a prelude to the full brand transition, which Elon Musk has sketched out, giving a few hints from time to time.

The businessman is clearly referring to the Chinese app WeChat and not the microblogging social networks as we know them today. WeChat combines many other features, including the ability to make calls or pay online. “There are absolutely no limits to this transformation”promised the new CEO of Twitter, appointed by Elon Musk in May last year. “X will be a platform that can provide… absolutely everything”she continued in a series of posts published this Sunday.

So Twitter becomes X, and according to Musk himself, what is currently called a tweet should eventually be called X. But what is this letter for? It seems that she actually accompanies his projects from the very beginning. “X.com” was the name of one of the first online banks in the world, which he created in 1999. The following year, it was renamed Paypal, and under that name became one of the main means of payment around the world. Reselling it on e-Bay would also land the young South African businessman into the billionaire club, only 30 years old.

We later find X in the private space agency Musk created in 2002: SpaceX. But also to name an electric model from his car company: Tesla X, released in 2015 and remaining the most powerful electric SUV to date with the best autonomy. More recently, the businessman announced the launch of X.AI, a startup specializing in artificial intelligence, with which he wants to compete with Open.AI, the developer of ChatGPT.

But the richest man in the world’s fetish for the 24th letter of the alphabet goes much further. The son he had in 2020 with Canadian musician Grimes actually dubbed X Æ A-12 Musk. Her younger sister, born the following year, was first christened Axa (which can be understood as the feminized form of X in English), the name was later changed to “Y”.

Even to his biographers, Musk’s obsession with pornography seems mysterious. “It could be from a comic book or even from a movie, it’s hard to tell with him.”one of them, journalist Tim Higgins, calculated. “It’s probably also because it sounds good”he supposes.

X is indeed often surrounded by the smell of sulfur, in both English and French, from the X-Files series to X-rated videos. Due to the latter and the confusion they could cause around his X.com website, Musk’s entourage also tried to dissuade him from using the name. The young businessman held on and still hasn’t explained himself.

“X” is also the universal sign of the unknown in mathematics, which metaphorically fits Elon Musk’s Twitter project, which is both mysterious and dreams of the absolute. “And soon we will say goodbye to the Twitter brand and to all the birds.”, he tweeted again this Sunday with his usual provocative undertone. In 2017, he quietly bought the X.com domain name from Paypal, which he then left to vegetate in a quasi-dormant state. Since this Sunday, this one-letter site has been linking directly to Twitter, which seems to be the case.