Elon Musk has made one of the most visible changes to Twitter since he took control of the social media company last autumn: replacing its widely recognised bird logo.

In a tweet early on Sunday morning Eastern time, Musk said that “soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds”. About 24 hours later, a stylised, black-and-white X appeared on the company’s website in place of the blue bird logo.

Twitter’s corporate accounts also adopted the new branding, which was projected onto the side of the company’s headquarters in San Francisco overnight. “Lights. Camera. X!” Linda Yaccarino, Twitter’s chief executive, posted on the site, accompanying a photo of the building.

“X” is a term for what Musk has described as an “everything app” that could combine social media, instant messaging and payment services, akin to the popular Chinese app WeChat.

Musk has said that buying Twitter is “an accelerant to creating X”, and the corporate entity he created to purchase and control Twitter is called X Holdings.

Musk spoke on a Twitter audio live stream early on Sunday to say he was changing Twitter’s logo. “It should have been done a long time ago,” he said. “Sorry, it took so long.”

A few hours later, Musk said in an email to Twitter’s employees that “we are indeed changing to X”. “This is my last message from a Twitter email,” he wrote, before signing off with a salute emoji.

Musk has few barriers to making such alterations at the company after taking it private as part of his acquisition of the firm. But he could still encounter resistance from the banks that have lent him billions of dollars and the private investors he brought into the deal, who could raise concerns about jettisoning one of Twitter’s most visible assets.

It saw its ad revenue plummet amid the departure of sales executives and worries that the site had become more prone to problematic content.

New York Times News Service