From Twitter to X Elon Musk began erasing an iconic internet brand, and he’s facing a hiccup in his drive to rebrand Twitter as X after police stopped work to remove the old name from the sign at the company’s San Francisco headquarters.

On Monday, workers were seen removing the first letters of the word Twitter before the local police department stopped them from continuing the “unauthorized work,” according to an alert sent by the department.

The tech billionaire, who bought Twitter last year, renamed the social platform X.com on its website and started replacing the bird logo with a stylized version of the 24th letter of the Latin alphabet. But Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has already registered an “X” logo in connection to “online social networking services” and “social networking services in the fields of entertainment, gaming, and application development.”

Meta’s “X” logo in its trademark filings looks different from the one Musk put on Twitter’s website. Meta’s “X” looks like two arrows with rounded ends pointing inwards — one white and one blue — while Twitter’s “X” is a black-and-white angular rendition.

But Twitter could run into some hurdles given that it wants to use its X for social-networking purposes, similar to what was stated in Meta’s filings.

Musk risked the wrath of Twitter’s users even as he can ill afford to upset them. His company faces financial difficulties and increased competition, with rival Meta releasing Threads, as this move wiped out anywhere between $4 billion and $20 billion in value, according to analysts and brand agencies who have called the renaming process a mistake.The company has already declined significantly in value since he purchased it for $44 billion in October, and advertising revenue is down more than 50% since.

However, Mike Carr a co-founder of the branding company NameStormers who helped come up with names for thousands of clients said :

“If they do this wrong and it was anybody other than Elon Musk, he’d be running a higher risk because people could start making fun of it.”

Another one who didn’t seem bothered by the change was Jack Dorsey, a Twitter founder and former chief executive : ‘’Musk could do whatever he wanted with the brand, but “I hope the bird occupies a space in culture that is a happy memory or becomes one of those logos that belongs to culture rather than a company.”

Can this rebranding venture achieve success? Is it even likely to materialize? And will this accomplishment match Twitter’s unquestionable breakthrough?