Musk previously owned an online banking site known as x.com, which would later merge with PayPal, another service founded by Musk, which then became a separate entity with Musk no longer being involved it.
And when Musk was forced to complete the purchase of Twitter, he announced plans to make Twitter into a “Super app” like China’s WeChat application, which can be used for payments.
Musk’s hyperfocus on X might also be because when he was in his twenties, everything “cool” was having an X in it, like XForce and stuff like that.
He also wanted to create his X Corp company to have a single X as its name, but he couldn’t do that because there was an Alphabet company already using that name.
Musk didn’t found PayPal. X.com merged with Confinity, another online financial site (founded by Peter Thiel and others). Confinity had already begun development of PayPal at that time. In the resulting company, still called X.com, there was a series of leadership conflicts, with Musk pushing out CEO Bill Harris to become CEO, before himself being replaced by Peter Thiel. It was under Thiel that the company changed it’s name to PayPal, and later went public. By the time there was a company called “PayPal”, Musk was not longer involved with daily operations.
Elon can never let perceived slights go, like the Thai cave rescuer thing. He wanted PayPal to be called X and lost, now he’s rebuilding it 20 years later.
One of the most recognizeable brands from the past 20 years is suddenly changing it’s branding and throwing all that recognition into the trash. I don’t know why people keep acting like this isn’t worth talking about. I don’t give two shits about musk or Twitter and don’t even have Twitter accounts or whatever, but even I recognize this is a noteworthy change (and his reasons for doing it) for the world.
I actually do wonder whether he is trying to destroy it on purpose. Every step he’s taken is perplexing if he wanted the platform to actually succeed. Of course it is also possible he is just very very stupid.
I believe he wants to feel like he created this platform all by himself. He buys platforms and makes them his own. This is just him trying to make Twitter more his own. Ego
Meta’s rebranding at least makes sense. The company has been more than Facebook for a long time, so collecting everything under a different umbrella isn’t too far fetched. Facebook still exists as a product, so they haven’t thrown away all the brand value. Google did kind of the same with Alphabet.
Rebranding Twitter to X doesn’t make sense at all.
Especially because they bought a bunch of companies that weren't Facebook. Another example is Google rebranding as Alphabet. Those make complete sense.
But they're not just re-branding. Twitter is now under some kind of corporate shell company. I haven't seen much coverage of that, but my suspicion is that it's intended to act as some kind of insulator to contain Twitter's debts.
Like when they break a company into pieces and put everyone's debts and no assets into a single part and then that part declares bankruptcy and all the debt magically goes away, leaving everything else with lots of assets and no debts and a future that looks really rosy. I can't help but think that this is something similar to that.
Wow, I wish I could split myself up into separate entities to bankrupt part of so that I can get away Scott free. But alas, I’m a real person, not a company with “personhood.”
Can we also talk about how absurd that picture at the bottom of the login page is? It looks like something a warez site would have as its landing page in like 2003. Made by some guy named xXx_l33tz3r0_xXx
Haha, this makes me actually nostalgic thinking about some of the warez sites I frequented back in 2002/2003! Scanning for “pubs” with scetchy software was what I considered a good time back then.
Part of me wonders if it’s an attempt to tank the SEO, so people can’t search for or news or easily talk about the site anymore - because it’s been nothing but bad.
More seriously: Elon decided it’s a good move to rebrand his new toy. Nobody knows for sure what’s going through his head. It’s probably some sort of OCD, or something…
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