Commotion broke out at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco when police turned up and ordered workers to stop removing the Twitter signage at the front of the building.
Workers had begun removing the company’s iconic bird and logo.
Videos of the incident show members of the San Francisco Police Department arriving while workers were dismantling the bird sign and lettering from a boom lift.
US reports say that while the police presence was a misunderstanding, it was triggered by owner Elon Musk’s failure to obtain a permit for the hydraulic crane. Musk had failed to notify both security and building residents.
The incident happened a day after Musk announced the rebranding of Twitter as X.com, which is now revealed as more substantive than a name change.
It is the end of Twitter as we know it.
In a Tweet (an X) of her own, CEO Linda Yaccarino described a future for X that encompasses not just messaging and chat, but also payments, banking, audio and video driven with AI.
“It’s an exceptionally rare thing – in life or in business – that you get a second chance to make another big impression,” she wrote. “Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square.
“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.”
The transformation will still take time with the mobile app still showing the old Twitter logo. Typing x.com into a browser will redirect you to the Twitter website now rebranded as X.com. Tweets are now to be referred to as Xs.
X also marks the spot with Musk this month naming his new AI startup xAI, which he aims to build as a rival to OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT.
Musk in the meantime has tweeted a selfie taken in front of a combined Tesla/X sign.
The transformation of Twitter to a much broader X comes a few days after Musk admitted that Twitter’s revenue had dropped by 50 percent.
The Wall Street Journal quoted commentators saying the rebranding alone was unlikely alone to see advertisers return to the new X.com. That bird had already flown before the attempted removal of the bird signage.
The expansion into X.com also takes the service beyond being a direct competitor to Mark Zuckerberg’s Threads social network, with the prospect of global financial services perhaps the biggest outtake of Musk’s latest move.
It also suggests one of the original intents of Twitter as a fast means posting and reading breaking news is all but lost.
The new branding also means forms – both paper and online – that ask for a Twitter handle will need to be updated.
