Elon Musk stripped Twitter of its traditional blue-bird logo and rebranded the app with a minimalist “X” design late Sunday while sending signals that the company will be unveiling new financial features.
On Sunday afternoon, chief executive Elon Musk tweeted: “X.com now points to twitter.com. Interim X logo goes live later today.” The new logo was also projected on the social-media platform’s headquarters in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday night.
The development prompted Walter Isaacson, a prominent American biographer who is currently writing a biography of Musk’s life, to expand on the tech entrepreneur’s thinking.
“When his cousin Peter Rive visited in early 1999, he found Musk poring over books about the banking system. ‘I'm trying to think about what to start next,’ he explained. His experience at Scotiabank had convinced him that the industry was ripe for disruption. So in March 1999, he founded http://X.com,” Isaacson wrote on Twitter sharing an excerpt from his forthcoming book.
“His concept for http://X.com was grand. It would be a one-stop everything-store for all financial needs: banking, digital purchases, checking, credit cards, investments, and loans. Transactions would be handled instantly, with no waiting for payments to clear. His insight was that money is simply an entry into a database, and he wanted to devise a way that all transactions were securely recorded in real time.”
"If you fix all the reasons why a consumer would take money out of the system," Musk told Isaacson, "then it will be the place where all the money is, and that would make it a multitrillion-dollar company."
Later at PayPal, Musk also sought to have the company renamed. “Musk insisted that the company's name should be http://X.com, with PayPal as merely one of its subsidiary brands,” Isaacson added. “He even tried to rebrand the payment system X-PayPal.”
Musk responded to Isaacson’s long post by simply writing: “Accurate.”
The tech founder’s obsession with rebranding and incorporating new financial tools was echoed by its newly appointed CEO, Linda Yaccarino. “It's an exceptionally rare thing – in life or in business – that you get a second chance to make another big impression. Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square,” Yaccarino tweeted late Sunday.
“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.”
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