- Nepal's urban poor count cost of 'nightmare' floods
- E.Guinea, Gabon clash at ICJ over oil-rich islands
- New blow for UK's Starmer as growth data disappoints
- China's top banks to tweak mortgage rates to boost housing market
- Muslim women break taboos navigating east London's waterways
- Nepal dam-building spree powers electric vehicle boom
- More than 60 dead from storm Helene as rescue, cleanup efforts grow
- Dozens missing, 9 dead in migrant boat wreck off Spanish Canaries
- Death toll from Hurricane John hits eight in Mexico
- Storm Helene's toll rises as rescue and cleanup efforts gain pace
- SpaceX launches mission to return stranded astronauts
- Storm Helene kills 44, threatens more 'catastrophic' flooding as cleanup begins
- SpaceX set to launch mission to return stranded astronauts
- Storm Helene kills 44, threatens more 'catastrophic' flooding
- Boeing strike grinds on as latest talks fail to reach agreement
- Iran 'news' sites, hackers target Trump ahead of US election
- US ports brace for potential dockworkers strike
- Japan's speedy, spotless Shinkansen bullet trains turn 60
- US hurricane deaths rise to 44, fears of more 'catastrophic' flooding
- Global stocks mostly rise, cheering Beijing stimulus
- Europe en route for Moon with new simulator, says astronaut Pesquet
- Fireworks forecast if comet survives risky Sun flypast
- Argentina judge orders dictionary to delete pejorative definition of 'Jewish'
- Global stocks rise on rate hopes, Beijing stimulus
- S.African woman turns 118, among the oldest in the world
- UK clears $4 bn AI partnership between Amazon, Anthropic
- Barca fans barred from Champions League away game over racist banner
- Chinese stocks extend surge, Europe higher on Beijing stimulus
- Pope says Church must 'seek forgiveness' for child sexual abuse
- China caps week of 'bazooka' stimulus for ailing economy with rate cut
- Cuts, cash, credit: China bids to jumpstart flagging economy
- France's debt weighs heavier ahead of budget debate
- Iran treads carefully, backing Hezbollah while avoiding war
- Return to sender: waste stranded at sea stirs toxic dispute
- 'Broken' news industry faces uncertain future
- On remote Greek island, migratory birds offer climate clues
- Taken from mother by nuns, victim seeks answers as pope visits Belgium
- China cuts amount banks hold in reserve to boost lending
- Hong Kong, Shanghai extend surge as China optimism boosts markets
- Vietnam president reiterates support for Cuba during official visit
- Drought reduces Amazon River in Colombia by as much as 90%: report
- Stay or go? Pacific Islanders face climate's grim choice
- Florida bracing for 'unsurvivable' Hurricane Helene
- Poverty rises to over 52 percent in Milei's Argentina
- Chloe's see-through look may not be for Kamala Harris
- Champagne houses abuzz over English sparkling wine
- Macron, Trudeau pledge to work for 'decarbonized' economies
- Hurricanes, storms, typhoons... Is September wetter than usual?
- China stimulus, tech optimism boost stock markets
- 'Unsurvivable' Hurricane Helene races towards Florida
Musk, top exec say Twitter to be renamed X, get big makeover
Twitter owner Elon Musk and the chief executive he brought aboard just a month ago say the social media network will ditch the bird logo, rebrand the platform with the name X and move quickly into payments, banking and commerce.
"Powered by AI, X will connect us in ways we're just beginning to imagine," Twitter chief executive Linda Yaccarino tweeted Sunday afternoon.
Late Saturday night, Musk indicated he plans to jettison Twitter's blue cartoon bird logo.
"Soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds," he tweeted around midnight, implying an end to the imagery from where the very word "tweet" stems.
"Like this but X," the billionaire SpaceX boss said, above a picture of the Twitter bird over a black and white marbled background.
Yaccarino, an advertising sales executive at NBCUniversal whom Musk poached last month to become Twitter's CEO, said the social media platform is on the cusp of broadening its scope.
"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," Yaccarino tweeted.
"There's absolutely no limit to this transformation. X will be the platform that can deliver, well... everything," she said.
Since Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last October, the platform's advertising business has partially collapsed as marketers soured on the mass firings at the platform that gutted content moderation as well as on Musk's management style.
In response, the tycoon has moved toward introducing payments and commerce through the platform in a search for new revenue.
Twitter, founded in 2006 and whose name is a play on the sound of birds chattering, has used avian branding since its early days, when the company bought a stock symbol of a light blue bird for $15, according to the design website Creative Bloq.
The 52-year-old Tesla founder has previously said that his rocky takeover of Twitter last year was "an accelerant to creating X, the everything app," a reference to the X.com company he founded in 1999, a later version of which went on to become PayPal, a payments giant.
Such an app could still function as a social media platform, and also include messaging and mobile payments.
Musk has already named Twitter's parent company the X Corporation.
"If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make (it) go live worldwide tomorrow," he said.
Musk went on to make several other X-related comments, saying a new emblem should be "of course, Art Deco" style and that under the site's new identity a post would be called "an X."
Twitter is thought to have around 200 million daily active users but it has suffered repeated technical failures since Musk bought the app and sacked much of its staff.
Since then, many users and advertisers alike have responded adversely to the social media site's new charges for previously free services, changes to content moderation and the return of previously banned right-wing accounts.
Musk said earlier this month that Twitter has lost roughly half of its advertising revenue since he took control in October.
Facebook parent Meta earlier this month launched its own text-based platform, called Threads, which has up to 150 million users according to some estimates.
But the amount of time users spend on the rival app has plummeted in the weeks since its launch, according to data from market analysis firm Sensor Tower.
M.Davis--CPN