Culture

Twitter Is Dead. Long Live X Corp

Also the dog is now CEO.

by Charles Rushforth  12 April 2023

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Modifying Twitter’s official logo outside of their San Fran HQ to read “titter” for a laugh, temporarily breaking user’s Substack links while a serious glitch in Twitter Circles poses massive privacy concerns… keeping up with Elon Musk’s questionable stream of decisions as CEO Twitter ain’t easy.

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But while we’ve all been anticipating the death of Twitter for ages now, the details of a new US court filing seem to hint that the company as we know it simply doesn’t even exist any more. Worse, the information suggests Musk intends to build an “everything app” modelled on the Chinese social media platform WeChat.

Goodbye Twitter Inc, Hello “X Corp”

The public would officially be informed of the dissolution of Twitter Inc in the most Twitter way imaginable — from the legal details in a lawsuit between anti-Muslim activist / failed political representative Laura Loomer and Twitter. While Loomer’s case was nothing special — the far-right white nationalist has a history of suing social media companies who de-platform her for publicly sharing her ideologies — Twitter’s response was intriguing.

“Twitter, Inc has been merged into X Corp. and no longer exists,” read the filing, which later lists X Corp as being a subsidiary of X Holdings Corp.

X Corp and X Holdings are two shell companies owned and operated by Musk. During the sale of Twitter last year, Musk registered three separate divisions of X Holdings to manage the finances of both companies during the transition, according to Slate. While it’s not uncommon for public-facing services to be owned and operated by corporate ventures with different names, the news has drawn attention to Musk’s previous desire for an “everything app” named X.

What Is With Elon Musk’s Infatuation With The Letter X?

It seems the letter X has been living rent-free in Musk’s mind for decades, even as far back as the second company he founded, X.com. Envisioned as an Internet banking service, Musk also served as CEO of the company until being booted by the board while on his honeymoon to Australia. One year later, new CEO Peter Thiel would change the company name to PayPal.

Since then, the letter X has been a prominent feature of almost all of Musk’s business ventures, even in the names of his children. The letter has also been linked to a platform proposed by Musk to challenge WeChat, an enormously popular Chinese messaging and social media platform. In a video explaining his vision for the company, Musk iterates a plan for Twitter to essentially “copy” WeChat, similarly expanding services on the platform to retain users.

Announcing his plans to create an “everything app” named X last year, Musk estimated that his purchase of Twitter “probably accelerates X by 3 to 5 years”. After news broke of the merger of Twitter Inc and X Corp yesterday, Musk instead chose to cryptically tweet the letter X in lieu of a public statement.

Are We Going To See Twitter Turn Into X?

Considering the plethora of lawsuits currently facing Twitter, including an alleged breach of German hate-speech regulations that comes with a fine that’s bigger than the current valuation of the company, Musk’s ambition of a super app probably isn’t going to happen anytime soon. What we can expect is more of the low-brow “epic win” styled stunts that keep Musk’s name periodically appearing in Twitter’s trending tab.

For example, in a recent interview with BBC reporters about the current state of Twitter, Musk announced that he had ceded control of the company to his dog.