x.com. If you type this email address into any browser, a blank page opens. There is nothing inside. Not even a line of description. Just an X in the top left. But this domain belongs to Elon Musk. He allegedly bought it in the mid-nineties. He got it back five years ago. And these days Musk Twitter will have a new name. From “Twitter Inc” to “X Corp”. New name, new location. From Delaware the company will move to Nevada, while the headquarters will remain in San Francisco.
Twitter will still exist on smartphones. On computers. But Twitter Inc no longer exists for a few hours. X for Musk is an ancient dream. In the 1990s he named his first fintech company that. Before creating PayPal with Peter Thiel. EX is what he envisions the future of Twitter to be. One super app, one app to do it all. Exchanges of money, ecommerce, chat, up to imagining the possibility of integrating services for the sale of assets and cryptocurrencies enhanced by artificial intelligence tools.
Twitter sheds its skin. The dream of a superapp on the WeChat model
The Twitter skin shedding has been in the area for a few days now. Slate was the first to talk about it. Who in his articles confirmed what has long been thought of Musk’s acquisition of the social network: Twitter is just a springboard to create the first “everything app” in the West, the app to do everything, on the model of WeChat in China. A huge challenge. Which so far has put giants like Meta in difficulty (Facebook launched its Libra stablecoin four years ago, a project that foundered after the investigations and doubts of the American authorities; today nothing is known about Libra).
The American media have tried to contact Twitter for clarification on the social move. However, the answer is the same, automatic, the same for a few weeks for all the media that ask questions of Musk and the social network: a poop stylized as an emoticon.
Musk has a contentious relationship with the media. Since he bought Twitter he has engaged in even tough fights with journalists and newspapers. On Tuesday he tweeted an “X” without any other context or detail. It has been said, X for Musk has an ancient symbolic meaning. It’s the name of his company, it’s in the name of SpaceX, one of his children is called “X”. And yesterday, during an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp (BBC), he reiterated: “My goal is to create X, the application for everything” and reiterated that “Twitter is just an accelerator”.
New headquarters in Nevada. The investment in AI and the agreement with eToro
Why move from Delaware to Nevada? According to The Wall Street Journal, Nevada laws provide greater discretion and protection to a company’s executives and officers than Delaware does. Twitter is now a private company. It is no longer listed on the stock exchange. It is controlled by only one person and nothing prevents him from making this choice. Also because the next steps of Musk and Twitter (or X) are rather delicate.
Musk has decided to focus on artificial intelligence for the near future of social media. As reported by the American media in recent days, the company would have bought a few tens of thousands of graphics cards to speed up the process of creating an internal AI. Not only.
Twitter recently signed an agreement with eToro to launch financial services for Twitter users: charts, real-time information on the performance of stocks and cryptocurrencies. “Twitter has become a critical part of the retail investing community – it’s where millions of ordinary investors go every day to access financial news, share knowledge and have conversations,” said Yoni Assia, chief executive officer of eToro. Fintech, artificial intelligence and social media. An interweaving that could characterize the future of Twitter. For now still hidden behind a mystery. An X.