Companies rebrand all the time, but rarely do the cops get involved.
On Monday, San Francisco police officers were called to the corporate headquarters of “X,” the social media website formerly known as Twitter, after receiving a report of an unauthorized street closure.
The dispatch was made around 12:45 p.m. local time after X hired a work crew to begin dismantling the iconic Twitter sign on the side of the company’s headquarters, which involved blocking off a portion of the sidewalk in front of the building.
Police ultimately left the scene after determining the issue was a civil matter and that no crime had taken place.
Over the weekend, Twitter owner Elon Musk announced on his own account that Twitter would adopt the branding of its parent company, which Musk had changed to X several months ago.
The rebrand fixes none of Twitter’s issues since Musk took it over last October, to include technology glitches that have left users unable to post content to the service; security problems that have locked users out of their account, and policy changes that have made it increasingly difficult for brands, marketers, celebrities and journalists to figure out what content is appropriate to post and what is not.
“It’s an exceptionally rare thing—in life or in business—that you get a second chance to make another big impression,” said Linda Yaccarino, the former NBC advertising executive who was hired to lead Twitter — and now X — as its full-time CEO in May.
Yaccarino said Twitter hopes to be a platform that plays home to a wide variety of interactive services, from audio to video, banking to messaging and everything in-between, whatever that might be.
For Yaccarino and Musk, the rebrand is an attempt to steer Twitter and its core services in the right direction — if for no other reason than to reverse its financial misfortunes. Of the $44 billion Elon Musk put forward to buy Twitter last year, $25 billion came from his own pocketbook. Some financial analysts say Twitter has lost as much as $29 billion since the acquisition, with Musk’s own personal investment almost entirely gone.
