Skip to main content

Live: Twitter's strange X rebrand explained and ChatGPT comes to Android

Our Fast Charge liveblog is your quick fix of all the latest tech news, with up-to-the-minute updates on all the latest stories.


Welcome to another strange day in the tech circus that is Twitter – or should we say, X, as the social media site will seemingly now be called, following a swift rebrand over the weekend.

Elon Musk started tweeting yesterday about Twitter's sudden rebrand to X, which follows the business being renamed X Corp last year. A new logo was quickly crowd-sourced on Twitter – and it looks like the full rebrand is going ahead, despite it having the hallmarks of another kneejerk publicity stunt.

But why is this happening and what does it mean for Twitter? We'll be exploring that below in our liveblog, so stay tuned for all of the latest updates. And if you don't fancy jumping on the dizzying Twitter carousel, we'll also be rounding up all of the latest news that broke over the weekend.

This includes the imminent launch of an official ChatGPT for Android this week – and in less good news, Spotify's likely raising of individual Premium pricing in the US. But first, it's time to unravel the demise of Twitter's blue bird...

See more

There's only one place to start with today's tech news – Twitter's overnight rebranding to X. It started with yesterday's Tweet above from Elon Musk, which kicked off a fast-paced makeover for the social media site that gave it a new logo.

Over the next few hours, Musk took part in a Twitter Spaces chat (where he stated that “we’re cutting the Twitter logo from the building with blowtorches") and changed his Twitter profile to the new logo.

So what exactly is going on? As ever with Musk, there method to the apparent madness remains slightly unclear, but it's likely to be related to Musk's recent announcement of xAI and his desire to turn Twitter into an all-encompassing app in the guide of China's WeChat. More on that shortly...

See more

What exactly is the plan behind Twitter's X rebrand? Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino has tried to explain the vision (above), which sounds an awful lot like the app wants to become an all-encompassing answer to WeChat. 

Yaccarino states that messaging will just be another part of the new Twitter, sitting alongside "payments/banking" (interestingly, Musk's original X.com merged with PayPal back in March 2000) to help create a "global marketplace". Sounds like memes might become something of a Twitter sideline...  



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

TechRadar's Year in Review: AI revolution, smartphone evolution, and visions of the future

If I had to sum up 2023 in one word it would be AI. Okay, technically that’s two initials, but let’s not quibble – because there’s no doubt that it provided the year in tech with its main story arc. Artificial intelligence was everywhere this year, as every company in the world gawped at the massive impact of ChatGPT, and decided they wanted to jump aboard that bandwagon. You could barely move for new chatbots, new image generators, and new AI-enhanced features in every device released in 2023. And there’s no sign of that changing in 2024; in fact, we expect it to be an even bigger deal. Elsewhere, phones and laptops did much the same as they had the previous year – well, except where they had new AI-enhanced features – so it was in the virtual reality space where bigger changes were afoot. If the Meta Quest 3 was impressive then the Apple Vision Pro looks to be genuinely game-changing, and we can’t wait to see what impact it has in the next 12 months. Of course we also saw plenty ...

Microsoft and Sony enter "binding agreement" to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation

Microsoft has announced that it has reached a "binding agreement" with Sony, pledging to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.  With Microsoft having won its anti-trust case with the US Federal Trade Commission , its planned acquisition of Call of Duty developers Activision Blizzard has taken a big step closer to becoming a reality. In order to alleviate the concerns of monopoly-building that got Microsoft in legal hot water to begin with, the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, announced yesterday via Tweet that it has entered into an "agreement to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation."  This agreement will no doubt come as a relief to fans concerned that Microsoft's acquisition plans might result in Call of Duty becoming an Xbox exclusive, following in the footsteps of future Bethesda releases. Since Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda caused the studio to break its tradition of offering titles cross-platform for upcomi...

This Stardew Valley-like farming sim plays at the bottom of your screen so you work and play at the same time

Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing are among some of the best choices out there if you're looking for a game to get swept up in for hours at a time. But, if you're a fan of management sims and a multitasker as well, this upcoming farming sim will likely pique your interest.  Developed by Mister Morris Games, Rusty's Retirement is an idle-farming simulation game that runs at the bottom of your gaming monitor, allowing you to focus on other tasks like working while you tend to your crops. Set to release in Q1 2024 on Steam , the idle sim puts you in the shoes of a wholesome robot as you grow crops and use them to produce clean and energy-efficient biofuel. Having gathered this "vital robot power source," you'll then need to sell your harvest to the other machine inhabitants of your settlement. This, in turn, will let you reinvest the money into expanding your farm. If you're a terrible procrastinator (like me) this might not sound like your cup of tea...