Elon Musk has revealed a new logo for Twitter, choosing a “minimalist art deco” X as part of a rebrand of the platform.

The Twitter owner indicated the design would be altered, tweeting that it “probably changes later, certainly will be refined”. Twitter’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, confirmed the choice on Monday by tweeting the design and writing: “X is here! Let’s do this

Musk had appealed to his 149 million followers for design ideas and appears to have chosen a logo that he had flagged on Sunday via a flickering video pinned to the top of his Twitter feed.

The “X” logo has long been an obsession of Musk’s and is his name for an “everything app” that he has pledged to launch at some point – with Twitter the likely vehicle. Shortly before buying Twitter in October, Musk described the social media platform as “an accelerant to creating X, the everything app”.

After taking over Twitter in October last year, Musk folded the company into an entity called X Corp, whose parent is X Holdings Corp. This month, the Tesla CEO announced he was forming a new artificial intelligence company called xAI.

The crowd-sourced logo had been posted by Twitter user Sawyer Merritt, co-founder of a sustainable clothing business, who tweeted that the font had been used for a discontinued podcast, although it also bears similarity with a font used by Indian dance music artist Kxlider.

The X concept is modelled on WeChat, the Chinese app that allows users to perform multiple functions from messaging to ordering a taxi and paying bills. In June last year, Musk reportedly told Twitter staff: “You basically live on WeChat in China. If we can recreate that with Twitter, we’ll be a great success

Yaccarino gave some details on Sunday of how she expected X to work, tweeting that the business would be AI-powered and “centred in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking”. As of Monday morning the Twitter’s desktop version was carrying the new logo in place of its signature bird symbol and the official Twitter account had been changed to the X brand.

One analyst warned that the rebranding move was high-risk given the competitive outlook for Twitter, which is suffering financially from advertisers withholding spending and the emergence of a “Twitter killer” rival called Threads, launched by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.

“By changing Twitter’s app name, Elon Musk will have singlehandedly wiped out over 15 years of a brand name that has secured its place in our cultural lexicon,” said Mike Proulx, research director at the analysis firm Forrester.

“This is an extremely risky move because with ‘X’, Musk is essentially starting over while its competition is afoot.”