'The everything app': What Musk's rebranding of Twitter to X could mean for future of his companies
SAN FRANCISCO -- Elon Musk has literally X'd out the iconic Twitter logo.
On Monday afternoon when crews tried to physically take down the sign at the company's San Francisco headquarters - it didn't go smoothly.
San Francisco Police halted the process over concerns of a permit - turns out a permit was granted.
And if you go online - the rebrand to X is official there too.
VIDEO: Bye Bye Birdie: Elon Musk reveals new black and white X logo to replace Twitter's blue bird
Patrick Masini from Colorado said it's Elon Musk's company.
"If he wants to rebrand it he should cause he could do whatever he wants with it," Masini said.
Connecticut resident Sydney Distefano said the word 'Tweet' and 'ReTweet' is incredible marketing he's losing out on.
"Any other brand would kill for that daily brand recognition but he's just so driven on his own little personal like -oh I can do this all," Distefano said.
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Grant Kien, Professor of Communications, Cal State East Bay said the Twitter that we knew is gone.
Kien said it's Consistent with the branding of Tesla X, SpaceX, and other companies.
Kien said this change could be part of a broader ecosystem within the other technologies Musk has been working on.
"With automated cars for example you may be able to call a car from the X.com app," Kien said.
On Monday evening Musk posted that X will be the "everything app" saying:
"In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world."
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Kien and other experts have compared this to Asia's 'WeChat.'
"It allows you to make payments but you can also chat one on one, you can have group chats you can do video, it's basically a system in itself," Kien said.
He said it's been challenging for companies that have tried to pull this off.
"We tend to have a bit of skepticism maybe is the way to put it when Facebook says I want to handle your payments too and same with Google, I mean they've tried a lot of different approaches to pulling all these things together," Kien said.
MORE: Elon Musk says Twitter has 'negative cash flow' and 'heavy debt'
San Jose resident Sergio Silva said he doesn't like the idea of an app like WeChat.
"It's kind of like, one app does everything, you rely too much on it you know cause if that app goes bad then it's like oh you have to start over with something else. I like having multiple apps to do multiple things- and it kind of lets you be more free in that sense," Silva said. "I don't want to have to be dependent on Elon Musk, you know, probably someone like him."
There are media reports the 'X' is already trademarked by other big tech companies.
"It's hard to imagine that wasn't thought through already," Kien said. "And my guess is that there's some brand in one of the other entities that he's in charge of that actually has a strong ownership of the brand he actually has released."
Kien said this rebrand was not unprecedented and we can expect change like this to happen.
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