So now it has happened: Elon Musk has dissolved Twitter. Since the multi-billionaire took over the company almost six months ago, Twitter has repeatedly been declared dead. Musk would save and ruin the platform, users, experts and journalists feared. The official end is far less spectacular: Twitter is now called X, otherwise nothing will change for the time being.
The company Twitter, Inc. became X Corp. in mid-March, which in turn became X Holdings Corp. heard. The name change works from court documentswhich initially only a pseudonymous Twitter account were noticed. start of the week reported the online magazine slatesince then speculation about Musk’s possible motives has increased.
One interpretation is that Musk wants to transform Twitter into an all-purpose app along the lines of Wechat. The Chinese app combines social network, financial services, online shopping, food ordering, appointment scheduling and job exchange. “It does everything – sort of Twitter, plus PayPal, plus a whole bunch of things, with a great interface”, Musk said almost a year ago. “It’s really an excellent app, we don’t have anything like it outside of China.”
At his first Meeting with Twitter employees in June Musk once again expressed his admiration for the “great, great app” WeChat. If Twitter could do something similar, Musk said it would be a huge achievement. Nearing completion of the takeover at the end of October he wrote: “The acquisition of Twitter is an accelerator for the development of X, the app for everything.”
Musk’s comment? X
The letter X seems to have fascinated Musk for a long time. In 1999 he founded the online bank X.com, the symbol also appears in SpaceX, the Tesla Model X and in the names of his children. Six years ago, he bought back the X.com domain from Paypal. As usual, the Twitter owner commented cryptically on the current speculation with a single letter: “X“.
In recent years, Musk has often promised or announced things that he later wanted to know nothing about. He loves showing off to the media and the public, and has had to pay tens of millions of euros in fines for his jokes and tweets. Perhaps the transformation of Twitter into X Corp. another troll – with the pleasant side effect that the company is registered in Nevada, just like Tesla and SpaceX, which could mean fewer obligations and legal advantages.
Maybe Musk really wants to radically rebuild Twitter and merge it into X, the app for everything. At least he’s already actively working to create reasons to rebrand not only the company but also the app by ridiculing the Twitter brand. At the beginning of April, instead of the company logo, a dog temporarily adorned the website. Musk painted over the ‘w’ in Twitter on a sign at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco. Anyone who sends questions to Twitter’s press office, as for this article, will receive an automated response that aptly describes Musk’s relationship with independent media: an emoji in the shape of a poop.
In the past six months, Musk has fired more than three quarters of the employees, and now only around 1,500 people work for Twitter. He let users vote on whether former US President Donald Trump should be allowed to return, whether an amnesty should be issued for permanently suspended accounts and whether he himself should step down as Twitter boss. The result is yes three times, but so far Musk has only brought Trump and thousands of right-wing extremists back, and he is taking his time with his resignation.
More than half of top advertisers withdrew from Twitter. Companies feared their ads might appear alongside racist, anti-Semitic, or misogynistic tweets. According to Musk, it was just a temporary hiatus. “Almost all of them either came back or said they will come back,” he said in a Tuesday night interview Interview with a BBC reporterthe live was broadcast on Twitter.
According to Musk, Twitter is doing “reasonably well”, despite the mass layoffs, the platform is still working. He does not regret the purchase and would allegedly not even sell Twitter if someone offered $ 44 billion – Musk had paid this amount, he recently estimated Twitter’s current value to about $20 billion. Musk indirectly admitted that he himself contributed to the depreciation with his controversial tweets. “Did I shoot myself in the leg multiple times with tweets? Yes,” he told the BBC. “I think I shouldn’t tweet after 3am.”