After being acquired by Elon Musk, Twitter has officially changed its domain name to X.com, completing a process that began a year ago. The social media platform, now renamed X following the ownership change, had continued to operate under the internet domain Twitter.com.
On Friday, the tech magnate and entrepreneur announced the final transition to X.com through his social media account.
In October 2022, upon finalizing his purchase of the former Twitter platform, Elon Musk aimed to signify the start of a new era by renaming it and founding X Corp., now the successor to Twitter.
From Twitter to X.com: Elon Musk’s Transformations
Since taking over the social media platform, Elon Musk has implemented several significant changes, both structural and practical. Initially, the Tesla owner conducted massive layoffs, reducing Twitter’s staff from 7,500 to about 1,300 employees, citing the presence of redundant and unnecessary positions.
In terms of user experience, Musk introduced the popular “community notes” feature to combat fake news and inaccuracies in public posts. This tool has gained widespread acceptance among users.
Additionally, Musk focused on improving the platform’s profitability by increasing ad space and enhancing the revenue system for content creators. He introduced a premium subscription service, costing between $3 to $16 per month depending on the plan, which offers advanced features for publishing and editing posts, among other benefits.
While Musk’s changes significantly altered the user experience, they also negatively impacted the app’s usage, resulting in a 23 percent loss of users since the takeover.
Overall, Musk’s policies have been far more tolerant and permissive regarding freedom of speech, a principle crucial to the billionaire’s vision. He believed that the social media platform’s algorithms were biased towards liberal views. This shift has led to an increase in controversial, conspiratorial, and hate content, which the platform has tried to balance with community notes on posts. Additionally, there has been a significant rise in sexual content and the presence of porn spambots, viewed as important revenue-generating content.
Why X?
Musk’s first decision as Twitter’s owner and CEO was controversial: he replaced Twitter’s historical and iconic blue bird with the letter X.
This isn’t the first time Elon Musk has utilized the letter X in his entrepreneurial ventures. In 1999, he founded X.com, a company providing online financial services when the internet was still in its early stages. X.com eventually merged with PayPal, evolving into the current global giant in payments and online transactions. At the time, Musk saw X as an attractive, easy-to-remember, and easy-to-type letter and name.