Twitter today officially ditched its iconic blue bird logo for a simple white X on a black background. The change is part of a wider rebranding effort under Elon Musk's ownership of the platform, reports ndtv.com

Early today, Musk tweeted an image of the X branding beamed across Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco.

Both Linda Yaccarino's and Musk's Twitter handles feature the X logo, although the Twitter blue bird is still visible across the platform.

"#GoodbyeTwitter" was trending on the platform with reference to the old logo as some users criticised the new one.

Musk said on a post on Sunday he wanted to change Twitter's logo and polled his millions of followers on whether they would favour changing the site's colour scheme from blue to black.

He posted a picture of a stylised X against a black outer space-themed background. He also referred to the "interim X logo," and tweeted that "soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds".

Weeks before completing his Twitter acquisition last year Musk had said that buying the company would speed up his ambition to create an "everything app" called "X" by three to five years.

Musk bought x.com back from PayPal in 2017, saying it had "sentimental value". Musk had co-founded x.com as an online bank in 1999 which later transformed into PayPal.

While Twitter's official page on the platform has been renamed as "X", the domain x.com is not active.

"X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centred in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities," Yaccarino tweeted on Sunday.

Yaccarino, the former advertising chief at NBCUniversal who started as Twitter CEO on June 5, has taken over when the social media platform is trying to reverse a plunge in advertising revenue.

Since the takeover of Twitter, the company has faced tumultuous times with layoffs, a sharp drop in advertisers and the meteoric rise of Threads, Meta's response to Twitter.

"The last few months have been tumultuous at Twitter, and I don't think a new brand is going to solve everything," Drew Benvie, CEO of social media consultancy Battenhall, said.

"This is less about reinventing Twitter, and more about building a brand around Elon Musk's empire, including SpaceX, where the 'X' branding really connects a little more closely."