Like a venomous puss moth rising from its arduous cocoon, the social network formerly known as Twitter has absolutely metamorphosed into x.com.
Varied components of Twitter had already embraced the rebranding, and the corporate has been using x.com hyperlinks since early April. However now the area has flipped over fully, marking the tip of a tumultuous transition interval—and erasing the final vestiges of the chicken app.
“We’re letting you already know that we’re altering our URL, however your privateness and knowledge safety settings stay the identical,” reads a message on the backside of the X login and residential pages.”
The switchover has been a very long time coming. Musk introduced the shift from Twitter to X last July. However the billionaire has for many years harbored a dream of making an “every little thing app” by that identify, and Twitter is his vessel.
“The Twitter identify made sense when it was simply 140 character messages going backwards and forwards—like birds tweeting—however now you possibly can submit nearly something, together with a number of hours of video,” Musk wrote on the newly redubbed X final summer season. “Within the months to return, we are going to add complete communications and the flexibility to conduct your whole monetary world. The Twitter identify doesn’t make sense in that context, so we should bid adieu to the chicken.”
Twitter below Musk has certainly added video and voice calls to its roster of options. It has additionally replatformed conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones, fostered a welcoming environment for porn spam accounts, made an absolute hash out of verification, launched a monetization system that encourages rampant engagement farming, gutted its trust and safety team, allowed a surge in hate speech on the platform, designated NPR as “US state-affiliated media,” removed news headlines fully after which reintroduced them in a bizarre spot, kneecapped a bunch of enjoyable bots and third-party apps by introducing wildly expensive API changes whereas giving blue-check verification to AI-generated chum, pivoted to video, launched an AI mannequin that may help you do crimes, and overseen a decline in utilization of over 20 p.c within the US, in keeping with app analytics agency SensorTower.
The “whole monetary world” half stays a piece in progress.
A sentimentalist might bemoan the death of Twitter, which for all its faults at all times had a capability to thrill and shock. However do not forget that this transformation was inevitable. Musk first owned X.com in 1999, when he cofounded an internet financial institution by that identify; it will finally merge with a competitor and grow to be PayPal. He purchased X.com again from PayPal in 2017, tweeting that it had “nice sentimental worth.” And he has seen Twitter as a vessel to create X on Earth since earlier than acquisition was even accomplished, in keeping with Musk biographer Walter Isaacson.
“Within the days main as much as his takeover of Twitter on the finish of October 2022, Musk’s moods fluctuated wildly,” Isaacson wrote in Elon Musk. “He mentioned that he would flip it into the mix of economic platform and social community he had envisioned 24 years earlier for X.com, and he added that he deliberate to rebrand it with that identify, which he beloved.”
To place a fair finer level on it, Musk’s tweet today saying that “all core programs are actually on X.com” featured the emblem of the corporate he based 25 years in the past.
Whereas X might by no means grow to be the every little thing app of Musk’s desires, it’s undeniably and indelibly a unique place than the one he purchased. Which in some methods makes this ultimate transition all of the extra palatable. No matter Elon Musk’s platform has grow to be, it’s definitely not Twitter. Name it no matter you need.
