Twitter becomes „X“

Twitter owner Elon Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino have unveiled the short messaging service's new logo. "X is here!" tweeted Yaccarino on July 24th. 

The white X on a black background replaces the familiar blue bird symbol on a white background. Yaccarino announced a major rebuild of the platform.

The platform's advertising revenues have plummeted. There are technical problems again and again. 

Also to calm the advertisers, Musk had hired the former advertising sales manager of the media group NBCUniversal, Yaccarino, as Twitter boss last month.

Yaccarino herself wrote on the short messaging service that X should stand for "unlimited interactivity" in the future. 

She listed audios, videos, messaging, payments as part of a "global marketplace for ideas, goods, services and opportunities.“ Artificial intelligence, she said, should help X connect people. There is no limit to this transformation, he said.

Anyone who types in the web address X.com is already redirected to Twitter's website. The Twitter website partially features an X as the new logo, but the bird is also partially still there. 

Musk had previously hinted at accelerating Twitter's planned transformation into a multifunction app along the lines of China's WeChats. He brought the online service into a new company called X Corp. in the spring.

However, the decision to rename Twitter into X could be potentially legally problematic: Companies like Meta and Microsoft already have intellectual property rights to the letter.

X is so widely used in numerous brand names, which provides fertile ground for legal challenges. Thus, the former Twitter group could face problems in the future defending its use of the X trademark.

According to attorneyJosh Gerben, who reportedly found almost 900 active U.S. trademark registrations that already cover the letter X in a variety of industries: "There is a 100 percent chance that Twitter will be sued by someone over this (...)."

Source: www.faz.net and www.reuters.com