Elon Musk’s X Rebrand Cues Complications—and Porn Jokes

Elon Musk’s Twitter rebrand is off to a chaotic start. 

Swapping the blue bird logo for the letter X has confused users, upset some former employees and opened the door to lawsuits. Ditching the site’s nomenclature threatens years of brand equity. And some say the new logo is more akin to a pornography site than a social-media platform.

It’s all because of Musk’s enduring fixation with the letter X.

The world’s richest person has made it known that he wants to turn X into a so-called everything app offering capabilities from audio and video to messaging and banking.

“I like the letter X,” Musk tweeted on Sunday alongside a photo of him making the letter X with his arms.

X.com was the name for Musk’s online payments company before it became PayPal. Then there is Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, founded by the billionaire more than two decades ago. His new artificial-intelligence venture is called xAI. Musk often refers to one of his children as X. His electric-car company, Tesla, calls one of its vehicles Model X.

Twitter, or X, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Lawyers say it could be a challenge for Musk to change the meaning of a letter in the public consciousness, particularly one that has risqué associations. The term X-rated is commonly understood as a reference to adult content. Numerous pornography websites contain the letter X in their names and logos.

XVideos, a pornography website, thanked Musk Sunday on the site formerly known as Twitter. “We love seeing Xvideos trending. Thanks @elonmusk,” the post read. 

Some former Twitter employees got a shock when they saw a new black-and-white X on their LinkedIn accounts.

Sara Beykpour, who worked at Twitter for 12 years, posted on Twitter a photo of her LinkedIn profile with the X logo, saying, “do not want. @LinkedIn help plz.” She declined to comment.

Nic McConnell, who worked as an account manager at Twitter from 2018 to 2020, asked LinkedIn for help Monday after a black-and-white X showed up on his profile. 

“I don’t want to be associated with Elon Musk in any capacity and I sure as hell never worked for whatever X is,” he wrote in a public post on LinkedIn. Within two hours, the logo on his profile reverted to the bird.

McConnell said working for Twitter helped his career. “I don’t know whether those sorts of opportunities would be there if I had X on my resume instead.”

LinkedIn didn’t respond to a request for comment.

A Twitter Timeline

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Launched in 2006, Twitter changed the way many people consumed news or spoke their minds online. prakash singh/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The rebrand could do more than just agitate former employees. It could invite legal challenges for X Corp. The company doesn’t own the rights to use the letter X on social media.

“Twitter cannot just block off the rest of the world from using that letter for anything else,” said Emily Poler, a trademark litigator who runs the law firm Poler Legal LLC in New York.

Trademark attorneys said protecting a potential trademark or fending off litigation over the use of X could be a lengthy battle. It could cost more than $100 million to trademark X around the world and pay settlements to other trademark holders, said trademark attorney Josh Gerben.

There are thousands of trademarks in the U.S. associated with the letter X, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The Wall Street Journal didn’t find any X trademark registrations by X Corp.

Meta Platforms owns one of those trademarks: A blue-and-white X logo to be used on social networks. Meta declined to comment.

Twitter, or X, users were baffled when the rebranding first appeared on the social-media platform Monday.

“Why kill the bird?” one user posted.

“I don’t get it,” multiple users wrote.

Other people posted that the company’s new X logo resembled the Unicode character for the letter X, used by encoders.

The hashtags #GoodbyeTwitter and #RIPTwitter trended on the platform this week.

Even visitors to the company’s San Francisco headquarters were confused by the company’s name. Workers stopped taking down the building’s Twitter signage Monday with only the last two letters—“er”—remaining.

Musk and X Corp. executives said the company’s revamp broadens the site’s appeal. “X will be the platform that can deliver, well….everything,” said Chief Executive Linda Yaccarino in a Sunday post.

The company now has to do away with Twitter colloquialisms like “tweet” and “retweet.” Musk said a post would now be called “an X” in response to a user’s question. Another user asked what a retweet was now called. “That whole concept should be rethought,” Musk said.

Gerben, the trademark attorney, said it was unusual for a company like X Corp., formerly known as Twitter, to abandon its globally recognized brand for a new one. 

“You know how few brands get to this point in time and have this international value, and to just toss it out the window?” Gerben said. “That’s jaw-dropping.”

There were other complications. Until Tuesday, the official company handle was still @Twitter. The @X handle was owned by someone else. 

Gene Hwang, a 52-year-old photographer in San Francisco, said he snagged it years ago because his middle initial is X. On Tuesday, Hwang said he received an email from the company assigning him a different username, freeing @X for the company. 

Hwang said he was mostly amused by the turn of events. X offered him the ability to transfer his account to any unused username, merch and a visit to X’s headquarters, according to an email, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal. 

He said he was considering the offer: “I might as well get something.”

—Alexa Corse and Joseph De Avila contributed to this article.

Write to Talal Ansari at [email protected], Meghan Bobrowsky at [email protected] and Alyssa Lukpat at [email protected]