Twitter, the brand, ticks a number of boxes. It stands for a short burst of noise, like that from a bird. The logo that the company adopted – a blue bird – was also apt. Twitter the brand achieved another rare distinction. It became a verb. Just as we say ‘Xerox that document’ or ‘Google it and see’ we also say ‘Let’s tweet that out’. Such rapid verbification of a brand name is indeed a rare distinction.

The journey did not start with the name Twitter or the blue bird or with the idea of becoming a microblogging platform. The product started in 2006 as an SMS for communicating with small groups and the initial name was Twittr, simply because the domain name Twitter was already taken. The company bought out the name six months later and it was not a service that could be defined. Was it a social network? Was it a microblogging site? In the words of one of its founders Evan Williams, “Twitter actually changed from what we thought it was in the beginning, which we described as status updates and a social utility. It is that, in part, but the insight we eventually came to was Twitter was really more of an information network than it is a social network” [Inc.com Oct 5, 2013 interview].

Between 2006 to 2010, the brand’s logo was the name written in a smooth rounded sanserif font in lowercase, in blue – the font, I suppose, to communicate informality (compare that to IBM, always in bold letters) and blue to signify trust. In 2010, the company bought the blue bird logo on iStock for a glorious sum of $15 from Simon Oxley. Later the company modified the logo and for years used the brand name and the blue bird together. It was only in 2012 that the company removed the name from its logo and allowed the bird to stand free, or fly free. Which bird does it signify? Again, it is said that the bird was supposed to resemble a hummingbird.

I have had the opportunity to closely observe hummingbirds over the last few days. They are a marvel. They can fly but also stay in the same position, and when required can fly off at pretty fast speeds. One tweet on Twitter may amount to nothing but another may fly off in many different directions. I learnt just a few days ago that the blue bird had a name: Larry.

All in all, the brand name Twitter, and the blue bird Larry, fit together well and have remained unchanged for the last decade. Then why change now?

Often when a company gets acquired the new buyer is keen on putting his or her stamp on the old company. Or when a new CEO takes over, he/she wants to create a quick impression that change is afoot. Often this results in a name change or a logo change. These changes do not amount to much and are soon forgotten. Sometimes the company is forced to go back to the old logo, as was the case with the GAP brand. In 2010, they decided to junk its all-cap serif logo to go to a lowercase sanserif logo, only to go back to the old logo in six days!

Name changes and logo changes work best not as the first step but as the last step of a transformation process of an organization. For example, Accenture is one of the most respected consulting companies in the world today. But it was not born as Accenture. It was originally a division of the accounting behemoth Arthur Andersen. To avoid client conflicts the consulting division, the poor cousins, were hived off and allowed to carry the name Andersen Consulting. I suppose the team at Andersen Consulting realised that they had to find their own charter and cannot depend on Arthur Andersen to refer business to them. They developed a robust growth plan and figured out new domains like IT service consulting and other future-facing opportunities. In order to send this message out to the prospective customers and clients they capped it with a name change: Accenture, derived from the phrase ‘Accent on the Future’. As readers may remember Arthur Andersen is no longer in existence as an aftermath of their involvement with the accounting scandals at Enron and Worldcom. Accenture continues to power ahead including making inroads into new domains like digital marketing communications.

The change in the name of Twitter.com to X.com, the disappearance of the blue bird and the appearance of the X logo cannot be the end game for Twitter or X.com. To be successful this has to be the beginning of a new business that will take the positive aspects of the old Twitter and meshes that with some dramatic new ideas. Twitter was not born as Twitter and neither was the blue bird something that came into being in its first innings. Brands change. Logos change. The more impactful name changes are where they signify a deeper change in what is being offered to customers. If not, it will be just window dressing and an ego massage for the CEO.

Ambi Parameswaran is an independent brand strategist and founder, Brand-Building.com a brand advisory. He is also the co-author of the Indian version of the most widely used brand marketing textbook, 'Strategic Brand Management by Kevin Lane Keller, Vanitha Swaminathan and Isaac Jacob'.