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(Kitco News) - Twitter owner Elon Musk has made good on his promise to rebrand the popular social media platform to “X” as part of his long-term goal of creating an “everything app.”
Following months of preparing for the change and teasing it on social media, Musk announced the rebrand in a Sunday tweet, saying, “X.com now points to twitter.com. Interim X logo goes live later today.”
Linda Yaccarino, who was appointed as the new CEO of X in May, followed up Musk’s tweet by saying, “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in 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.”
As part of the rebrand, the well-known Twitter blue bird logo has been replaced with an X, the color scheme of the platform has been changed from blue to black, and the Twitter URL has been changed to x.com, a domain linked to a financial services startup that Musk launched in 1999 that was ultimately sold to PayPal.
Musk laid the groundwork for the rebrand in April when he changed the corporate name of Twitter to X Corp after merging with a shell company of the same name. He has now integrated the letter X across multiple companies, including SpaceX and several Telsla car models.
The launch of X comes as Musk remains intent on creating an “everything app,” similar to China’s WeChat platform, which he said will establish the platform as “the biggest financial institution in the world” while speaking at a Morgan Stanley conference in March.
Social media applications in China allow users to pay bills, make dinner reservations, book rides, and conduct other financial transactions alongside their social media activities without having to leave the app.
Musk has lamented the fact that such an application was not available to people in the U.S. and is looking to rectify that by transforming X into a similar type of platform.
When the corporate name for Twitter was rebranded to X Corp, the company also signed a partnership with eToro that allowed Twitter users to trade stocks and certain crypto directly from the app.
During a recent interview, Musk said that if done correctly, X could become a popular platform for finance, banking, payments and data, and over time it has the potential to become “half of the global financial system.”
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| Elon Musk moves to integrate payments on Twitter to boost revenue |
The company has been tight-lipped about its plans for payments on X following the receipt of money transmitter licenses in Michigan, New Hampshire and Missouri earlier this year. Twitter Payments LLC – the social media company's payments subsidiary – has applied for licenses in all 50 U.S. states, but there’s no clear timeline for the approval process.
There have been rumors that Twitter Payments plans to launch a project called “Twitter Coin,” which will coincide with the launch of its own crypto wallet, but the social media platform has yet to verify any such development.
The rebrand to X coincides with the launch of Sam Altman’s Worldcoin (WLD) token, adding another layer to the ongoing artificial intelligence and global finance battle for positioning between Musk and the OpenAI CEO.
While Musk has not tweeted anything about cryptocurrencies since the rebrand took place, he did add the Dogecoin (DOGE) “Д logo to his X profile, which led to a spike in the price of DOGE.
BREAKING:
— Whale (@WhaleChart) July 24, 2023
@Elonmusk added Dogecoin symbol into his X bio. pic.twitter.com/q2879njHpf
Since Sunday’s announcement, DOGE price rallied from $0.07 to a high of $0.078, an increase of 11.3%, and currently trades at $0.074 amid a broad pullback in the cryptocurrency market.
