As Twitter is renamed, here is Elon Musk's love affair with the letter 'X'

Social media platform Twitter today launched its new logo X, replacing the blue bird with a white X on a black background. A day earlier, Twitter's owner Elon Musk had revealed the new logo, saying the company would be renamed X and move later into payments, banking and commerce. Musk had earlier updated his Twitter bio to "X.com," which now redirects to twitter.com. The world's richest person had also earlier merged Twitter with another entity called X Corp.

"Not sure what subtle clues gave it way, but I like the letter X. If X is closest in style to anything, it should, of course, be Art Deco," Musk tweeted recently.

Musk's obsession with the letter X started much earlier. He had cofounded a online bank called X.com in 1999, which later merged with its rival Confinity. In 2001, Musk was replaced as X.com’s CEO and later the company was renamed PayPal. Later in 2017, Musk brought back the the domain X.com from PayPal which he earlier owned. "Thanks PayPal for allowing me to buy back http://X.com! No plans right now, but it has great sentimental value to me," Musk had tweeted then.


Model X, Tesla's popular SUV, model was launched in 2015. Model X was the first SUV ever to earn 5-star safety ratings in every category and sub-category in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s tests. Elon Musk is also the founder of SpaceX, which designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. In 2008, the SpaceX Falcon 1 was the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to reach orbit.

On the personal front, Elon Musk publicly refers to his first child with Grimes as X, whose actual name is a collection of letters and symbols.

Linda Yaccarino, the longtime NBC Universal executive Musk tapped to be Twitter CEO in May, posted the new logo and weighed in on the change, writing on Twitter that X would be "the future state of unlimited interactivity - centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking - creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities."