THUMS UP FOR 'TWITTER' BRAND, AS X.COM CONJURES UP PORN SITE

ELON Musk has had a bumpy ride rebranding the more-than-a-decade-old ‘Twitter’ to the ethereal letter ‘X’. Last Monday, workers erected a crane and began removing the giant letters ‘Twitter’ at the company’s San Francisco headquarters. The problem was necessary permissions like blocking a busy street had not been taken. Result: the police department swooped down and stopped the work leaving the half-torn signage with the letters ‘er’!

- GURBIR SINGH

Half a hemisphere away, in Indonesia, there was more trouble. The Islamic country ordered the site be blocked as it could be taken for a porn site. Indonesia has strict laws restricting pornography and gambling and it was not very happy with what the rebranded X.com conjures up.

Elon Musk and his team have been mulling Twitter’s rebrand for some time. The object is, they say, to turn Twitter into a super app – something like China’s WeChat – for hyper-connected people that can do “everything” from access to podcasts, to shopping and watching videos.

“The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140 character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting – but now you can post almost anything, including several hours of video… and the ability to conduct your entire financial world,” says an Elon Musk post. “The Twitter name does not make sense in that context, so we must bid adieu to the bird,” Musk said.

Musk’s obsession

For the billionaire Musk, the letter ‘X’ has been an obsession. But it could well be the undoing of the $44 billion property he acquired last year.