Elon Musk plans to rebrand Twitter as ‘X’ — an idea that harkens back to the CEO’s early days when he was ousted from PayPal

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• Elon Musk said on Saturday that he intends to rebrand Twitter, changing the bird logo into 'X'.
• Musk has long proclaimed his desire to create an "everything-app."
• Musk wanted X as the name for a site that provides banking services, now known by its new name PayPal.

Elon Musk revealed plans to replace Twitter's bird-shaped logo with an "X", a reference the CEO's vision of creating an "everything" app that could include shopping, banking and other features.

Domain X.com redirects its users to Twitter. Musk announced that a new "interim X" logo would be available on Sunday. Musk did not reply to a comment request.

Twitter's possible new logo reminds us of Musk's early tech entrepreneur days. Musk was 28 years old in Silicon Valley in 1999 and had ambitions to launch an online banking firm.

Musk had launched Zip2, a company which provided software for city travel guides to newspapers, and sold it at that time for $341 million. Musk made $22 million from the deal.

His next venture, using the cash he had saved up, focused on banking. According to a Marketwatch article from 1999, the idea was to develop an online tool to manage mutual funds.

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What would you call this online service? Julie Anderson Ankenbrandt a former PayPal executive said that the name came from a Silicon Valley cafe.

Ankenbrandt, in a Quora answer from 2016, wrote: "There was an early night where Elon and the other founders… sat at a backroom bar in Palo Alto called the Blue Chalk Cafe, trying to decide (what) the name of the business should be." At that time, in early 1999, it was the intention to create a revolutionary financial platform with all of its data (banking, credit card, mutual funds, etc.) in one location. "At that point, early 1999, the intent was still to build a revolutionary full-service financial platform (credit card, mutual fund, and standard banking data all in one place – just imagine!

Ankenbrandt said that the final decision would be made by a waitress in the cafe.

Ankenbrandt wrote: "Elon asked what she thought and she replied that she liked x.com." "Elon pounded on the table and said 'That's all then!'

Former PayPal executive stated that the founders believed branding would be a problem due to the "pornographic association of the letter X. Musk might even welcome this crude association today.

She wrote: "But given the trajectory of our company, it never came to that."

Ankenbrandt was not available for comment.

X.com was launched in 1999. In 2000, X.com merged with Confinity, a competitor founded by Max Levchin and Peter Thiel.

Musk was ousted in late 2000 after disagreements within the company, involving the x.com brand name. Thiel became the new CEO.

Musk was not fired because of his name. Instead, it was due to internal disagreements about where to relocate the company's server. However, most employees did not like the name as Musk did.

AshleeVance's biography, "Elon Musk, Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future", states that almost everyone at the company preferred to call it PayPal. In 2001, x.com changed its name to reflect this.

Musk moved quickly on to new ventures. He founded SpaceX and invested in Tesla. Musk has never forgotten the name, even after more than 10 years.

SpaceX has not responded to a comment request sent over the weekend.

Musk bought the domain X.com in 2017 from PayPal for a sum that was not disclosed.

Musk said at the time that he had no plans for it, but it was a very sentimental item to him.

Musk formally merged X Corp., his newly purchased social media company, into a Nevada corporation eight years after he bought Twitter for $44 Billion.

Musk stated in October 2022 that "buying Twitter is a catalyst to creating X, everything app."

In a live discussion, the Twitter CEO stated that he envisages a service which "does it all — like Twitter plus PayPal plus a bunch of other things and all in one with a great user interface."

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By: lloydlee@insider.com (Lloyd Lee)
Title: Elon Musk plans to rebrand Twitter as ‘X’ — an idea that harkens back to the CEO’s early days when he was ousted from PayPal
Sourced From: www.businessinsider.com/history-behind-elon-musk-x-brand-that-may-replace-twitter-2023-7
Published Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2023 02:31:28 +0000

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