Twitter Began Removing its HQ Sign Before Police Intervened

Source: Justin Sullivan/Getty

Upon the news that Twitter was undergoing a rebrand to ‘X’, the company began removing the iconic vertical Twitter sign at its headquarters. Located on Market Street, San Fransisco, a large portion of the sign was removed before police stepped in and paused further progress.

News of Twitter’s rebranding came in hard and fast this weekend. Owner Elon Musk announced that Twitter would be no longer Saturday night. “And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk tweeted. The next day, the new ‘X’ logo and rebrand began.

As fast as the company got X.com to redirect to Twitter, the company also jumped on the chance to remove the official signage from the headquarters. On Monday afternoon, it was reported by The San Francisco Standard that workers began removing the letters from the vertical sign. Within 45 minutes of work, police appeared and stopped work.

With only the “ER” remaining on the sign, workers were informed that the company did not communicate the removal order with security and above all else, the owner of the building. Thus, the police were called. According to passerby Wayne Sutton, Twitter also failed to get a permit for the equipment on the street.

Welp, @twitter name so coming off the building right now but @elonmusk didn’t get permit for the equipment on the street so @SFPD is shutting it down. pic.twitter.com/CFpggWwhhf

— Wayne Sutton (@waynesutton) July 24, 2023

The Twitter rebrand feels as though much of it is off the cuff. Currently, both the app version and website still feature many uses of ‘Twitter’. Users can still ‘Tweet’ even though Musk claims they’ll soon be referred to as an ‘x’. The Twitter Blue subscription has also not been rebranded to a more suited version aligning with X.com.

It’s also been recently reported that the X logo itself is merely made up of the Unicode character 𝕏 (U+1D54F). Though, it’s suspected that since it can’t be copyrighted, the logo will likely be changed in soon enough time.

Musk is aiming to have X become the “everything app” of his dreams. Similar to China’s WeChat, X is said to soon focus on “audio, video, messaging, payments/banking”, according to CEO Linda Yaccarino.