Elon Musk has sign removed from firm's San Fran HQ

2023-07-24

Twitter’s blue bird comes crashing down: Cops called as Elon Musk has sign removed from firm’s San Fran HQ ‘without notifying security’ – as he changes company’s name to X after 18 years

The famous Twitter sign outside its HQ was being dismantled on Monday
Police were initially called regarding ‘a possible unpermitted street closure’
It came a day after owner Elon Musk announced a total rebranding of the site

Cops were briefly called to Twitter’s San Francisco HQ after a worker began tearing down letters from the building’s iconic sign a day after Elon Musk rebranded the platform to ‘X’.

Police responded to a ‘possible unpermitted street closure’ outside the building on Monday afternoon after a man on a cherry picker was seen removing pieces of the company’s sign – but later said no crime had been committed.

As of 2.30pm work appeared to have halted for unrelated reasons and on one face of the sign all that remained were the letters ‘er’ and a bird.

San Francisco Police Department officers suggested the work had been authorized by Twitter but not been properly communicated with building security. Police told DailyMail.com in a statement that it was not a police matter and directed any further questions to Twitter.

Crowds gathered and took photos of the sign’s dismantlement, which may mark the elimination of an internet brand that for nearly a decade and a half changed the way people around the world communicated.

San Francisco police arrive on scene as a worker removes letters from the Twitter sign. A spokesperson for the San Francisco Police Department has said no crime was committed

A worker removes letters from the Twitter sign that is posted on the exterior of Twitter headquarters in San Francisco on July 24

Crowds gathered and took photos of the sign’s dismantlement, which eventually attracted the attention of the police

Inside the building, Musk also started renaming conference rooms to incorporate the letter X, using names such as ‘eXposure,’ ‘eXult’ and ‘s3Xy,’ according to photos seen by The New York Times.

The alteration to the company’s Market Street signage comes around a day after Twitter owner Elon Musk announced he was totally rebranding the platform he bought last year and doing away with its bird logo.

Late on Sunday night the letter X was projected onto the building and shortly after traffic to the website X.com was being rerouted Twitter’s own website, from which the iconic blue bird logo was subsequently removed.

‘At approximately 12:39 P.M. officers assigned to Tenderloin Station responded to the area of 10th and Market Street regarding a report of a possible unpermitted street closure,’ a San Francisco Police Department spokesperson said in a statement to DailyMail.com.

‘Through their investigation officers were able to determine that no crime was committed, and this incident was not a police matter,’ they added.

A pile of characters removed from a sign on the Twitter headquarters building are seen in San Francisco on Monday afternoon

A worker on Market Street places the various letters removed from the sign and places them on the sidewalk under the supervision of a police officer

The alteration to the company’s Market Street signage comes around a day after Twitter owner Elon Musk announced he was totally rebranding the platform he bought last year

Police on the scene said someone from Twitter had a work order to take the sign down but ‘didn’t communicate it with security and the property owner of the building’, according to The San Francisco Standard.

The rebranding of Twitter was seemingly last-minute but had also been a long time in the making. In 2017, Musk said he had bought back the X.com domain from PayPal, the payment company he founded in the 1990s and later sold.

‘No plans right now, but it has great sentimental value to me,’ he tweeted at the time.

Walter Isaacson, the famous author who has published biographies on Steve Jobs and Leonardo Da Vinci, is set to release the story of Musk’s life later this year.

In a post to Twitter, Isaacson shared an except from his book that explains the history of Musk’s obsession with the letter X and his plans back in 1999 to establish X.com as a one-stop shop for various internet and financial services.

Twitter’s new logo is seen projected on the corporate headquarters building in downtown San Francisco, California, late Sunday night

Twitter’s new logo is seen projected on the corporate headquarters building in downtown San Francisco, California

Now, Musk plans to use Twitter as a foundation to pursue that ambition yet again nearly 25 years later.

‘His concept for X.com was grand. It would be a one-stop everything-store for all financial needs: banking, digital purchases, checking, credit cards, investments, and loans,’ wrote Isaacson.

But after internal struggle the company was rebranded to PayPal and sold. Isaacson said Musk had told him before he had even acquired Twitter that he was going to rebrand it X.com.

The shared excerpt from the book reveals that in the days leading up to his takeover of Twitter at the end of October, Musk texted Isaacson at 3.30am one morning: ‘I am very excited about finally implementing X.com as it should have been done, using Twitter as an accelerant!’

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