SAN FRANCISCO – Twitter on Monday began to shed its name and logo – both online and in the real world – but not before city police questioned whether crews were cleared to dismantle the iconic signage that has long graced its headquarters in San Francisco.
The signage removal work was paused while San Francisco police checked to see if a permit was in place to close the street. Unlike the signature blue bird, everything was on the up and up, and no tickets or citations were issued, police said in an email to the Bay Area News Group.
Elon Musk is replacing the Twitter name and logo with a stylized X as he seeks to turn the 17-year-old service into an app that does everything, Bloomberg reported. According to the news agency, Musk on Saturday invited his followers to suggest an X logo, then chose one of the designs and made it the company’s new brand identity Sunday.
About 24 hours later early Monday, the logo was projected onto the company’s headquarters on Market Street.
The sudden change comes as Twitter faces a sharp drop in advertising dollars and a new rival in Threads, a similar service from Menlo Park-based Meta Platforms Inc. that attracted 100 million users within just five days of launching earlier this month, Bloomberg reported.
As of Monday afternoon, only the “er” and the logo remained on the vertical sign at 1355 Market St. The removal work will presumably resume at some later point.
Staff writer Rick Hurd contributed to this report.