On Monday morning, TwitterA social media network, now known as X and owned by Elon Musk. users had a big surprise. The social media site's light-blue bird logo vanished. It was replaced by a white letter X on a black background. Twitter owner and world's richest man Elon MuskA South African-born entrepreneur whose companies have included the online payment service PayPal. He now controls Twitter, renamed 'X'. tweeted: "Soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds".

Workers started taking a sign showing Twitter's name from its headquarters. Instead, an X logo was projected on the wall.¹ Inside, meeting rooms were renamed after words with an X in theme: eXposure, eXult.

Users reacted with dismay. Actor Mark Hamill tweeted: "Has everybody seen the (eXecrableExtremely bad. ) new logo?" Despite the change, the website address remains twitter.com.

Musk acquired Twitter for £44bn last October. He was forced to buy it after trying to back out.² It has been one of the most chaotic business takeovers ever.

Musk immediately sacked 80% of the company's staff. He turned the blue tick, which guaranteed the identity of famous users, into a service anyone could pay for. And he loosened rules on what could be written on the platform.

He has also limited the number of tweets users could view - despite the fact that the site makes money from people viewing advertisements. Many advertisers have fled. The company is reputedly heading towards bankruptcyWhen a person or group has no money left and cannot pay off their debts. .³

Musk has been obsessed with the name X for years. In 1999 he founded an online bank called X.com. Musk even tried to change PayPal's name to X, but he was overruled.

There is a bigger idea behind this new attempt. Musk wants to turn Twitter into an "everything app" called X. Twitter's chief executive Linda Yaccarino tweeted: "X is the future state of unlimited interactivity - creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities."

But many wonder what this actually means. This vision for X is far from being realised. Twitter was an incredibly successful brand. Its logo was widely-known. It even added the word "tweet" to the dictionary.

Branding expert Mike Proulx says: "In one fell swoop, Elon Musk has essentially wiped out 15 years of brand value from Twitter and is now essentially starting from scratch." Another expert, Mike Carr, thinks the X logo an alarming "Big BrotherIn George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, Big Brother is the supreme ruler of the totalitarian empire of Oceania. It has since become a phrase that is in general use that people use to refer to threats of government surveillance." feeling.

Some think there is a method to Musk's actions. An "everything app" already exists in China. Chinese people use WeChat to message, send videos, order food and sell products. Musk wants to claim an American equivalent of this app before someone else attempts the same thing.

It also keeps Musk's app in the news. Last month, rival company MetaThe new name of the company which owns Facebook and Instagram. launched a Twitter alternative called Threads.⁴ It was downloaded 100 million times in a week. But now Twitter is back in the headlines. Writer Charlie Warzel calls X "pseudoware" - buzzwords and a logo designed to keep people talking.

It might also make a company mired with controversy seem new and exciting. Twitter has turned a corner. But no-one, including Musk, knows what lies ahead.

Brilliant: Musk has some extraordinary achievements. He has pioneered electric cars, domestic space travel, super-fast transport and AI. His behaviour on Twitter seems wild. But he may yet have a plan.

Bizarre: Musk's behaviour with Twitter reveals someone who has no idea what he is doing, a fantasist whose plans keep blowing up in his face. It even casts his past work into question. Is he just a big talker?

Or... Musk is neither a genius nor a fool. He is simply an average person, who follows whims and makes mistakes. Only when he does something, it is broadcast to the whole world and can have big consequences.