Elon Musk's Twitter unveils X to replace famous blue bird logo

Elon Musk's Twitter has rebranded, axing the iconic bird logo and replacing it with an X.

Desktop users noted the change on Monday as the usual blue bird, known as Larry the Bird, was replaced with a black X in the top left corner of the home page.

An official name change is yet to come and the option to "tweet" is still available.

Recently-appointed chief executive Linda Yaccarino tweeted a picture of a white cross on a black background, saying “X is here! Let’s do this”.

Mr Musk unveiled the new logo over the weekend, marking the latest major change since he bought Twitter in October last year for 44 billion US dollars (£34.3 billion).

It comes as part of his plans to create an "everything app".

One of the three men behind the original birds design, Martin Grasser, took to Twitter to dive into how the logo came about.

"There was essentially no brief, other than we want a new bird, and it should be as good as the Apple and Nike logo," he wrote to followers.

"We liked using a circles to construct our drawings, it felt like the bird should have an underlying neutrality and simplicity about it.

"Sometime in March we had an approved bird and it launched in May of 2012... This little blue bird did so much over the last 11 years".

An email sent to Twitter's business partners in the same month said it had been renamed as X Corp following a merger, but the social media platform would retain its original name.

The move is the latest in a series of major alterations to Twitter since Mr Musk's takeover, including the "verified" blue tick status being monetised in April and a temporary limit at the start of July on the number of posts users were allowed to read.

Facebook owner Meta launched Threads, its own text-based conversation app, earlier this month.

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said more than 30 million people had signed up to use his rival messaging app in the first 24 hours.

But Twitter has threatened to sue the company over alleged stolen trade secrets.

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