Twitter is already dead. Now we have “X for everything”. Elon Musk is building such a new empire

Founded in March 2006, Twitter was initially a microblogging service. A service that allowed sharing short thoughts (tweets) that other users could comment on, leading discussions in threads. The main goal of the portal was to enable people who had something interesting to say to be heard and to express their thoughts independently, not to friends, but to all users following a given account.

Over time, of course, Twitter began to offer more and more new functions, but for years it was faithful to its idea and completely different from typical social networking sites such as Instagram and Facebook. Suffice it to say that after 11 years of operation, in 2017, the portal increased the character limit from 140 to 280 as a test, which was criticized by some platform users (but pleased by some others).

Twitter is already dead. Elon Musk has completely broken with the past

Now there is no trace of the old Twitter. And not only because over the years the platform – following the course of natural development – has increasingly turned into a typical social networking site. This is mainly the result of numerous changes

These came to users quite unexpectedly, because probably no one suspected that the billionaire would completely change most of the elements characteristic of Twitter. Especially since, as he has repeated many times, he is not buying Twitter to make money from it, but primarily to introduce complete freedom of speech (in practice, the idea was to limit the moderation of tweets that violated the platform’s regulations).

Twitter revolution. It started with huge layoffs

Almost everyone lost their job overnight – from directors and other management staff, through engineers, programmers and moderators, to cleaners. that the company was starting to have trouble operating its normal operations and even the cleanliness of its San Francisco office. In the first three months after the high-profile transaction, more than 80 percent were removed from Twitter. with approximately 7.8 thousand all employees.

However, mass layoffs were not the end, but the beginning of the Twitter revolution. In just a few months since the purchase, Musk has managed to disrupt almost every aspect of the platform’s operations. It started with changes to the Twitter Blue service, which Twitter introduced in 2021 and which initially cost $3 a month (from May 2022 – $5).

The raise in itself might not be a bad thing. What’s worse is that Musk started bending over backwards just to somehow encourage users to make a purchase, adding more and more features for paying users over time. And so today, Twitter Blue subscribers (currently ) have the opportunity to have a verified account badge, edit and undo posts, format text, highlight their posts, publish longer videos and much, much more. , and – as Musk announced – their posts and comments are treated as priority and displayed before others.

Elon Musk, wanting to monetize the website, among others completely distorted the meaning of Twitter as a portal for concisely expressing one’s thoughts. It has also lost the meaning of the verified account icon (because verified users, but paid subscribers, no longer have it), and – and accelerated the outflow of advertisers.

Twitter is X. How to pronounce it? Worry yourself, user

the logo, the slogan “Let’s talk” (now “Blaze Your Glory!”) and the entire nomenclature (e.g. tweet as a post and tweet as “tweet”, i.e. publish tweets). Twitter turned into X overnight and without any notice.

The rebranding itself was carried out very chaotically. The removal of the old name and logo from Twitter’s headquarters was stopped by the police (building security did not know about Musk’s plans), . It was a close call and application X

So why is Musk so insistent on X? Of course, the use of this letter was not accidental. It is rather a reflection of Elon Musk’s long love for X. After all, the first serious business of the richest man in the world, the online bank founded in 1999, was called on PayPal). The X is also visible in the space company SpaceX, founded in 2002

Twitter is now X, but this is not the end of the revolution

X no longer resembles the old Twitter at all, but it seems that this is not the end of great changes on the platform bought by Elon Musk. , which is to function under the name “X, the app for everything”.

If Musk is to be believed, we will be able to do practically anything on X. It will not only be a social networking site, an instant messenger and a video chat platform. It will also offer online payment services, allow you to send money, and in the longer term, it may even allow you to order food or taxis. the platform aims to “transform the global marketplace” and will be “focused on audio, video, messaging, payments and banking.” “There are absolutely no limits to this transformation. X will be a platform that can deliver, well… everything,” she said in one of her X posts.

A small number of these features have recently been added to X or will be added in the near future. At the end of August, the billionaire announced It will be possible to call any person without knowing his phone number. Thanks to this – according to Musk – X will turn into a “global address book”.

What’s the point of all this? Of course, so that we can spend as much time on X as possible. The billionaire would like to build a service empire with Will it work? It is sometimes said that if something does everything, it sucks, but Musk seems to believe that “X for everything” can be much more successful than the old Twitter.