Exploring the Meaning Behind Elon Musk’s New Twitter Logo ‘X’
Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, has revealed plans to rebrand the social media platform’s bird logo into an “X.” This move is part of Musk’s vision to transform Twitter into a global marketplace that focuses on various features such as audio, video, messaging, payments/banking, and more. As a result, the domain X dot com now directs users to Twitter dot com. Musk has also announced that the new X logo will be launched later today.
But how many of you know that Twitter’s potential new logo takes Elon Musk back to his days as a tech entrepreneur, when he was 28 years old with the goal of starting an online banking company in 1999.
According to popular author Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk’s fascination with the name X.com goes back a long time. His experience at Scotiabank had convinced him that the industry was ripe for disruption. So in March 1999, he founded X.com.
The infatuation of @elonmusk with the name https://t.co/CZLJi8uLXZ goes way back. Here are some excerpts from my upcoming book, https://t.co/7JGHd10lOC“When his cousin Peter Rive visited in early 1999, he found Musk poring over books about the banking system. “I’m trying to… https://t.co/2PQr0qQhVG pic.twitter.com/WDdACBZTmc— Walter Isaacson (@WalterIsaacson) July 23, 2023
“His concept for X.com was great. It would be a one-stop shop for all financial needs: banking, digital purchases, checks, credit cards, investments and loans. Transactions would be processed instantly, without clearing payments. His vision was that money is simply an entry in a database, and he wanted to design a way to securely record all transactions in real time,” Isaacson wrote on Twitter.
According to the author, Musk managed to convince the influential director of Sequoia Capital, Michael Moritz, to make a large investment in X.com. Moritz then struck a deal with Barclay’s Bank and a Colorado-based community bank to partner so that X.com could offer mutual funds, obtain a bank charter and be FDIC insured.
Musk wanted the company to be called X.com and PayPal to be one of its subsidiaries. He even tried to rename the payment system to X-PayPal, but it resisted because PayPal was already a trusted brand. Later, conflicts arose between Max Levchin and Musk over the choice of the main operating system, Microsoft Windows or Unix.
Reports suggested that disagreements over the X.com name led to Musk’s departure from PayPal in late 2000. Most employees preferred the name PayPal, and in 2001 the company was renamed accordingly.
