July 23 (Reuters) – Twitter Inc owner Elon Musk signaled on Sunday that he will do more to take the social media company in a new direction with a name change that will replace the iconic blue bird logo with an X after finding that advertisers were slow to return.
The change, which was not visible on the website as of Sunday afternoon, follows Musk’s recent claim that advertising revenue remains at about half of what it was before. And Twitter’s cash flow is negative because of that and its heavy debt.
“The Interim X logo will be live later today,” Musk said on Twitter adding that “X.com” will now redirect to the Twitter website. Musk’s X Corp owns Twitter.
The billionaire said in a post on Sunday that he wanted to change the Twitter logo and asked his millions of followers if they wanted to change the site’s color scheme from blue to black. He posted a photo of a stylized X against a black space-themed background.
“And soon we will video the brand on twitter and, little by little, all the birds”, he said. The company said it would comment on the changes later.
Under Musk’s tumultuous management since he bought Twitter in October, the company changed its business name to X Corp, reflecting the billionaire’s vision to create a “super app” like China’s WeChat.
In April, Twitter’s legacy blue bird logo was temporarily replaced by Dogecoin’s Shiba Inu dog, helping to drive a surge in the value of the cryptocurrency market.
The company came under widespread criticism from users and marketing professionals when Musk announced earlier this month that Twitter would limit how many tweets per day can be read by different accounts.
The daily limits helped Meta Platforms-owned ( META.O ) rival service Threads, which surpassed 100 million sign-ups within five days of its July 5 launch.
Reporting by Mrinmay Dey and Rishabh Jaiswal in Bengaluru; Editing by William Mallard, Jan Harvey and Cynthia Osterman
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