Elon Musk announced on Twitter on Sunday that the app’s world-famous bird logo would be replaced with an “X” later that same day.
The Twitter owner previously said the change would come on Monday, but announced hours later via the app that the “Interim X logo is going live later today.”
Musk posted a short video with a flickering “X” early Sunday morning. He later replied, “Yes,” in an audio chat on Twitter Spaces when asked if the company’s logo would change.
“Yes, we’re cutting the Twitter logo off the building with blowtorches,” Musk said to an unidentified spokesman.
This adjustment will be the latest major change since he bought the social media platform for $44 billion last year.
Musk said the idea of changing the logo to “X” was to “embody the imperfections in all of us that make us unique,” according to a tweet.
“And soon we will say goodbye to the Twitter brand and one by one to all birds,” Musk wrote.
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Earlier this month, Tesla’s billionaire CEO imposed new curfews on his digital town square, a move that drew criticism for threatening to evict more advertisers and undermining his cultural influence as a trendsetter.
The higher threshold for viewing tweets is part of an $8-a-month subscription service Musk rolled out earlier this year to boost Twitter revenue. Sales have fallen sharply since Musk took over the company and laid off about three-quarters of its workforce to cut costs and avoid bankruptcy.
In May, Musk hired longtime NBC Universal exec Linda Yaccarino as CEO of Twitter.
Luring in advertisers is crucial for Musk and Twitter, after many fled the social media platform in the first few months after his takeover, fearing the chaos would hurt their brands. Advertisers have cut spending in part due to changes Musk made that have allowed more hateful content to flourish and have offended a larger segment of the platform’s audience.
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Musk said in late April that advertisers had returned, but didn’t provide any details.
Musk’s move to change the Twitter logo to an “X” also comes as Twitter faces new competition from Meta’s new app Threads, which launched earlier this month. It was seen as an alternative for those pissed off on Twitter.
Threads is billed as a text-based version of Meta’s photo-sharing app Instagram, which the company says offers “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations.”
According to a post by Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri on Threads, 100 million people had signed up for Threads in the first five days of its launch.