Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Social Media
  3. News

Elon Musk hints that he could start his own social media platform

Anita George
By

There could be an alternate ending to the whole Elon Musk Twitter takeover saga. Another Musk-helmed social media platform could be on the horizon if he’s allowed to back out of his bid to purchase Twitter.

On Tuesday, among a series of reply tweets to questions about Musk’s Twitter bid and his recent selling of Tesla stock, one particular reply tweet of his seemed to indicate that the Tesla CEO might very well just start his own social media platform if the Twitter deal falls through:

Recommended Videos

https://t.co/bOUOejO16Y

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 10, 2022

Now, beyond his pithy “X.com” tweet, we don’t know much more than that about this possible social media platform. This tweet mainly seems to indicate that if Twitter is unable to force Musk to purchase the bird app, he’d still be interested in owning a social media platform. And that platform could be an entirely new one with X.com as its domain.

While we don’t know much else about this possible platform, we do know a few things about the domain Musk mentioned. As Gizmodo notes, X.com is a domain that Musk already owns. X.com began as an online bank that Musk co-founded in 1999 and then it “merged with a competitor in 2000.” In 2017, Musk then repurchased the domain from Paypal. If you visit the X.com website, you’ll only see a plain, white background with a small “x” in the top left corner.

And if this is a social media platform Musk intends to build from scratch, then we might have some clues as to what an X.com platform could look like because we know what Musk has hinted at wanting for the bird app, back when he still wanted to purchase it. Generally speaking, we could see less restrictive content moderation, encrypted messaging, and a push for authenticating accounts (verifying that they belong to humans and aren’t bots).

All of this is still up in the air though, until we know the outcome of Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk, in which Twitter intends to force Musk to go through with his acquisition of Twitter.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Anita George
Anita George
Computing Writer
Anita has been a technology reporter since 2013 and currently writes for the Computing section at Digital Trends. She began…
Elon Musk’s latest plan for Twitter hasn’t gone down well
A digital image of Elon Musk in front of a stylized background with the Twitter logo repeating.

Elon Musk has said that from April 15, Twitter accounts will have to be subscribed to Twitter Blue to have any chance of their tweets appearing in the For You recommendations feed. Membership of Twitter’s premium tier will also be required to vote in Twitter polls, he said.

Musk, who acquired Twitter in October 2022 in a deal worth $44 billion, said the move was “the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over” the For You feed. Offered as an alternative to the Following feed, For You deploys an algorithm to serve up tweets that it thinks you’ll like, often from accounts that you don’t follow.

Read more
Twitter API broke links, images on the website this morning
A stylized composite of the Twitter logo.

Twitter broke in several places this morning, likely due to Twitter's own API. Slow load times, broken links, and services like TweetDeck went down on Monday, displaying an error related to Twitter's API. This is not the first hurdle Twitter has seen due to its API under the new leadership of Elon Musk.

When using a link on Twitter or accessing a service like TweetDeck, you would see this message: "{"errors":[{"message":"Your current API plan does not include access to this endpoint, please see https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api for more information","code":467}]}" That's not too helpful -- going to the website address in the error would take you to a page with the same error.

Read more
Elon Musk reportedly tweaked algorithm to boost his tweets
A digital image of Elon Musk in front of a stylized background with the Twitter logo repeating.

What can you do if Twitter fails to prioritize your tweets as much as you'd like it to?

Well, if you happen to own the social media platform, you could simply get someone to make a few phone calls to Twitter engineers and tell them to tweak the relevant algorithm.

Read more