For greater than 10 years, Twitter has been recognizable for its blue and white chicken emblem, which grew to become a logo of the social community’s distinctive tradition and lexicon. To “tweet” grew to become a verb. A “tweet” referred to a submit. “Tweeps” grew to become the moniker for Twitter staff.

Late on Sunday, Elon Musk started eliminating all of it.

The tech billionaire, who bought Twitter last year, renamed the social platform X.com on its web site and began changing the chicken emblem with a stylized model of the twenty fourth letter of the Latin alphabet. Inside Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, X logos have been projected within the cafeteria, whereas convention rooms have been renamed to phrases with X in them, together with “eXposure,” “eXult” and “s3Xy,” in keeping with photographs seen by The New York Times.

Mr. Musk had lengthy stated he would possibly make the identify change, however he hastened the method in a tweet early Sunday morning when he declared that “soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.” He has stated he hopes to show Twitter into an “everything app” referred to as X that might embody not solely social networking, but additionally banking and buying.

Early on Monday, Mr. Musk additionally shared a photo of an enormous X projected on Twitter’s San Francisco workplace constructing with the caption: “Our headquarters tonight.”

The strikes — that are persevering with — are probably the most seen adjustments that Mr. Musk has made to Twitter since he closed the deal to purchase the corporate in October. Behind the scenes, he has taken many steps to overtake the agency, eliminating hundreds of Twitter’s staff and altering the platform’s options, together with badges that have been meant to confirm customers, in addition to the foundations governing what can and may’t be stated on the service.

Yet the identify and emblem change have been unimaginable to disregard. And by beginning to take away the Twitter identify, Mr. Musk tossed out an entrenched model that had been round since 2006 — when the corporate was based — and that had delighted and pissed off celebrities, politicians, athletes and different customers in equal measure. Twitter launched its blue chicken mascot in 2010 and up to date it two years later.

Many Twitter customers, who’ve spent years tweeting and increase their presence on the positioning, appeared alienated by the shift. “Has everybody seen the (eXecrable) new logo?” the actor Mark Hamill tweeted on Monday, with the hashtag #ByeByeBirdie. Others noticed the transfer as Mr. Musk’s newest blow to the positioning, with some stubbornly saying they’d nonetheless name the positioning Twitter and would proceed to “tweet.”

When manufacturers change into verbs, it’s the “holy grail,” stated Mike Proulx, a vp and analysis director at Forrester, as a result of it means they’ve change into a part of in style tradition.

“The app itself has become a cultural phenomenon in all sorts of ways,” he stated. “In one fell sweep, Elon Musk has essentially wiped out 15 years of brand value from Twitter and is now essentially starting from scratch.”

Mr. Musk risked the wrath of Twitter’s customers at the same time as he can unwell afford to upset them. His firm faces monetary difficulties and elevated competitors, with rival Meta releasing an app this month for real-time, public conversations called Threads. The new app racked shortly up 100 million downloads in lower than every week, although utilization of the app is underneath scrutiny.

Mike Carr, a co-founder of the branding firm NameStormers, stated Mr. Musk’s X emblem may very well be interpreted as having an ominous “Big Brother” tech overlord vibe. Unlike the blue chicken, which he described as heat and cuddly however maybe a bit dated and weighed down by dangerous press, the brand new emblem was “very harsh,” he stated.

Still, it conjured phrases like “X marks the spot” and will assist Mr. Musk differentiate the platform from its Twitter baggage, Mr. Carr stated.

“If they do this wrong and it was anybody other than Elon Musk, he’d be running a higher risk because people could start making fun of it,” stated Mr. Carr, who has helped provide you with names for hundreds of shoppers, together with CarMax, the used automotive firm.

Mr. Musk has lengthy been within the X identify. In 1999, he helped discovered X.com, an internet financial institution. The firm modified its identify after it merged with one other start-up to type what would change into the net funds firm PayPal.

In 2017, Mr. Musk stated he repurchased the X.com area from PayPal. “No plans right now, but it has great sentimental value to me,” he tweeted on the time.

Tesla, Mr. Musk’s electrical automaker, additionally has a sport-utility car referred to as the Model X. One of Mr. Musk’s sons, X Æ A-12 Musk, is commonly referred to as “X” for brief. The holding firms created to shut the acquisition of Twitter have been named X Holdings. Mr. Musk additionally leads a man-made intelligence firm referred to as xAI.

“I like the letter X,” he posted on Sunday.

Mr. Musk has proven a disdain towards Twitter’s earlier company tradition. He has quibbled with the variety of chicken references within the firm’s inner workforce names and merchandise. At one level, he modified the identify of a crowdsourced fact-checking characteristic to “Community Notes” from “Birdwatch.” He not too long ago additionally had somebody cowl the “w” on Twitter’s identify at its San Francisco headquarters.

Among those that didn’t appear bothered by the change was Jack Dorsey, a Twitter founder and former chief govt. He stated in a tweet on Monday that whereas a rebrand was not “essential” to reaching Mr. Musk’s imaginative and prescient, there was an argument for it.

“The Twitter brand carries a lot of baggage,” Mr. Dorsey wrote. “But all that matters is the utility it provides, not the name.”

Martin Grasser, a San Francisco-based artist who was part of a team in 2011 that helped design the latest Twitter chicken emblem, stated it was meant to convey “simplicity, brevity and clarity.” The purpose was to have a emblem that was as memorable as Apple’s or Nike’s, he stated.

Mr. Grasser stated Mr. Musk may do no matter he needed with the model, however “I hope the bird occupies a space in culture that is a happy memory or becomes one of those logos that belongs to culture rather than a company.”