Twitter has stopped being called Twitter to become “X app.” This has been confirmed by Elon Musk, the brand-new owner of Twitter, and the company’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, in several posts published on the social network.
WeChat, the reference Musk uses for his X superapp, has more than one billion daily users in China alone.
For now, the change is already noticeable in the company’s branding. On desktop, Larry the bird, Twitter’s emblem since almost its creation, has already been replaced by the company’s new logo, a white X on a black background, and it is expected that the same will happen in the mobile version and Twitter’s mobile apps in the coming hours.
The new logo can also already be seen at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco, where it has been projected onto the facade, as shown in photos shared by the executives themselves on the social network.
The rebranding is just the first step toward a radical transformation the company will undertake in the near future. Elon Musk wants to turn the former Twitter into a superapp that is essential for users’ daily lives, where they can not only get information but also carry out many other actions.
“X is the future state of unlimited interactivity, centered on audio, video, messaging, payments/banking, creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine,” Yaccarino stated on the social network.
What the “X app” super application will be like
Elon Musk has reiterated several times his interest in developing what is known as a “superapp” or “an app for everything.” X would be an application capable of offering a wide variety of services and so many tools and utilities that it could make a good number of the apps everyone has installed on their phone unnecessary.
The concept is not new; in fact, it has been working very effectively for years in China with a platform like WeChat, which combines features of a social network, instant messaging, or payment and money transfer manager, among many other functions.
Musk claims that “X” would allow you to centralize in a single application tools such as: instant messaging, video conferencing, news, payment gateway, peer-to-peer money transfers, online store, restaurant reservations, food delivery orders, travel bookings, photo and video editing, games…
We’ll have to see how these features develop in the future and how they are integrated into a single app ecosystem. For now, we only know Musk’s idea to develop “X” as a super application.
Why “X” as the new name for Twitter
Elon Musk has played with the letter X throughout his career. As early as the beginning of the 21st century, he called his peer-to-peer payment startup X.com, a company that was eventually acquired by PayPal and whose spirit would now be integrated into the supposed financial tool Musk wants to develop within the new “X.” The eccentric executive bought back the domain from PayPal in 2017.
Beyond the promises of the new application, what is real is the change of logo and name of the social network. Is it a friendly brand that users will easily adopt? Will we get used to saying we “saw something on X” instead of “I saw it on Twitter”?
There is also speculation that tweets will now be called “X’s” (which could be pronounced as “exes” or as “equis” in Spanish, something that doesn’t seem very practical). We’ll see how the super application finally develops and what it will consist of, which tools will be launched worldwide, and how many of them will face legal issues in some territories. And, above all, we’ll see how Twitter users accept the change or if they look for alternatives to the social network once again or for good.
