X.com now redirects to Twitter.com, after a tweet today from Twitter owner Elon Musk, and an “interim X logo” will replace the Twitter bird logo later today. Leading up to the change, Musk spent a lot of time tweeting about it.
Last night around noon ET, he started tweeting — and did for hours — about Twitter’s rebranding to X, the one-letter name he’s repeatedly used in company and product names. It started with one tweet saying “soon we will say goodbye to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds”, followed by a second tweet adding that “if a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll go live worldwide tomorrow.”
Musk then gestured to the change between other messages and replies over the next few hours, tweeting things like “Deus X,” or to answer to other users talking about it. At one point he joined one Twitter Spaces session shouted “No one talks until we call Elon Musk,” and sat silent for nearly an hour before lifting mute and confirming he would change the Twitter logo tomorrow, adding “we’re cutting the Twitter logo out of the building with blowtorches.”
Musk also reportedly emailed Twitter employees last night to tell them that the company was becoming X, and that it would be the last time he would email from a Twitter address, according to a source. Post discussions by Platform game editor-in-chief Zoe Schiffer. She added that she assumed he was talking about the logo since Twitter’s company had already been renamed X corp.
The letter “X” is on just about everything Musk has touched over the past two decades. X.com was the original name for Paypal; it’s on his SpaceX company name; it’s in the name of the Tesla SUV; and he has said he wants to turn Twitter into “X, the everything app.” Now he’s finally doing something with the X.com domain he bought back from Paypal in 2017.
Finally, the rebranding of the site will be the clearest statement yet that this is no longer the same social network it was before Musk bought it last year. But it’s far from the only change in Twitter’s Musk era.
We’ve reached out to Twitter for comment. An automated response said, “We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
Update July 23, 2023, 3:31 PM ET: Added that Musk reportedly emailed Twitter employees overnight to notify them of the change. Added that too X.com now redirects to Twitter.com.
