Musk transformed the old “Blue Bird” brand into the shape of the letter X, colored in black and white (Shutterstock)

With the famous businessman Elon Musk's acquisition of the Twitter platform and turning it into the What is the story of transforming Twitter into the X platform, and what are the effects of this experience on the Twitter audience?

Elon Musk began the process of acquiring the American social media company Twitter on August 14, 2022, and completed the entire deal, acquiring the company on October 27 of the same year.

He paid $44 billion for the acquisition, fired the company's officials and employees, and changed the name of the platform from "Twitter" to "X", and announced this change on July 23, 2023.

He then transformed the old "Blue Bird" trademark into the shape of the English letter "X" in black and white. He stated that the reason he chose this symbol was to make the application “an application for everything.”

Musk's aspirations for the platform

Some claim that Musk's plan to transform Twitter indicates that he wants to have a social media platform similar to the Chinese platform "WeChat", which is a social media platform for posts, voice calls, and payment services with many other services.

Musk likened the Chinese platform to an integrated platform, and said that it is a platform that does everything, and it is an integrated set of things combined in one application, as if it is similar to the presence of Twitter and the electronic payment application PayPal.

Musk considered that the WeChat application is suitable for daily life, which is why it is widely used, but its use is limited in China. Therefore, by transforming Twitter into an integrated platform, Musk expects the new X platform to increase the number of Twitter users between 200 million and one billion users.

He stated that creating an integrated platform or application in the United States will never be easy in light of the many applications that compete fiercely today, but X may speed up the Twitter platform by about 3 to 5 years.

Musk's plan to transform Twitter indicates that he wants to obtain a social media platform similar to the Chinese platform "WeChat" (Reuters)

The reason for naming the platform X

There are many previous facts regarding Elon Musk's career that indicate his long-standing close association with this craft, and his belief in the success it brings.

In 1999, Musk co-founded an online bank whose domain name was called “x.com,” but some time later the bank merged with another company called Confinity and was then called “PayPal.”

Shortly after, Musk regained the domain name “X.com” and said that it meant a lot to him, in 2017.

In 2022, Musk founded the space technology development company SpaceX, which achieved many successes, most notably reducing the cost of access to space by developing rocket reuse technology.

In 2015, Musk launched the automobile manufacturing company “Tesla”, and after its amazing success, Max launched the “X” model, entitled “Tesla Motors X”, which is an electric car with advanced technological features.

In 2022, Musk established three holding companies called “X Holdings.”

Musk's relationship with the letter

Did it achieve its goals?

Despite Musk's broad hopes to make the The ancient company.

X is also subject to multiple regulatory investigations by several parties, such as the Stock Exchange, European authorities, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities Exchange Commission, which end with the imposition of sanctions on the company and Elon Musk. Analytics show that visits to the company's website decreased by 14%, which is neither promising nor close to Musk's vision for the future of this company.

X is subject to multiple regulatory investigations by the Stock Exchange, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities Exchange Commission (Shutterstock).

personal purposes

In the context of the rumors that spread about the X platform, many parties indicated that Musk used the platform with a bias towards his personal opinions.

Among the practices that have sparked controversy are: The ban was imposed on some parties and the ban was lifted on others. The platform also removed the ban on many political ads, and thus completely updated Twitter’s previous privacy terms.

A new feature was also added to the X platform, which is the appearance of a blue verification badge (which means that the account has been verified) next to the name on the platform in exchange for paying $8 per month. Many criticized this move because it caused cases of impersonation on the platform and encouraged the creation of untrusted accounts in exchange for paying fees.

This is in addition to the feature of enhancing the visibility of posts by users who have paid for the blue verification badge, with a program to share advertising revenues with these users and many financial rewards. In this case, users who spread misinformation may receive a lot of engagement, and thus a lot of financial returns, which encourages them to continue doing so.

Musk also used the platform to promote his other companies, promote some politicians, and fire some journalists such as NPR, which angered the masses of the social media world.

Despite Elon Musk's historical successes in the technological world, starting with Tesla, and moving on to OpenAI and SpaceX, the image of the X platform today is still unclear, so the fate of this platform remains unknown and depends on Musk's abilities to revive it and restore confidence to his audience.

Source: Al Jazeera + websites