Tag Archives: Elon Musk

Business, Lifestyle

Your Twitter is Now Your X

Leave a comment

Yes, I know, it’s been a long time coming. But, it’s time. Twitter is finally becoming X.

It seems like the writing has been on the wall for a while now with Elon Musk taking over the company last year. However, after what seems to be the most unusually tumultuous buyout ever, the day has finally come – the iconic blue bird logo is being retired for an “X”. The Twitter rebrand exercise was kicked into high gear three months ago with Elon Musk officially replacing the Twitter company with X Corp. [I know it weirdly sounds like LexCorp and we all know what happened with that company in Superman.]

X Corp
Source: @ElonMusk

The change has already taken effect with the x.com domain leading to twitter.com. The logo has also been changed to the “X” logo. This comes after Elon Musk tweeted, “And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds”. Even the official Twitter account is now an X although its handle is still @Twitter.

So, What Happens Now?

Well, that’s just it, aside from some grandiose words from both Elon Musk and newly instated CEO, Linda Yaccarino, we don’t really know. While Elon Musk has had a long history with the brand, it’s not much to go on. He’s used “X” in many of his other undertakings like SpaceX and xAI. His first startup in 1999 was x.com.

In an internal memo from Yaccarino to Twitter staff published by CNBC, she refers to the rebranding as a second chance for the company once known as Twitter to make a big impression. In the same statement, she highlights that X will be moving at lightspeed with an inventor mindset – “constantly learning, testing out new approaches, changing to get it right and ultimately succeeding.”. This could mean that we’re about to go for a real roller coaster ride with X and what’s coming for the remnants of Twitter.

However, if anything, it seems like Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino will be taking Twitter and turning it into a global version of WeChat – a one-stop app for everything or as companies like Grab and AirAsia like to put it a “super-app”. Elon envisions X as the “everything app” and we get a glimpse of the future in the internal memo from Yaccarino, she says that X will “continue to delight our entire community with new experiences in audio, video, messaging, payments, banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities.”

It seems like this is already underway in the U.S. with X Corp filing for the relevant regulatory approvals months ago. That said, it’s an end of an era with Twitter officially being wiped off the face of the living internet. After more than 15 years, one of the most iconic internet companies and platforms has been put down. That said, we don’t know what’s in store for X and X Corp as Elon has hinted at improvements and refinements in the near future.

Business, Lifestyle, News, Social Media

Elon Musk is Acquiring Twitter for US$ 44 Billion -What is Happening?

Leave a comment

Being rich has a lot of perks. One of them, as the richest man on earth, Elon Musk shows, is simply acquiring companies. His most prominent acquisition so far, that just went through anyway, is Twitter at US$ 44 Billion (MYR 191.333 billion*).

Of course, while this is our first report on Elon Musk’s bid to acquiring Twitter, it is not something that has gone quiet. Elon Musk bought over some Twitter shares a few weeks back and has been bidding to acquire the platform entirely ever since. Why? We do not know.

A few weeks back, with his acquisition of Twitter shares, he also promised that Twitter will soon have an ‘edit post’ button. The ‘edit’ button is something Twitter sorely lacks since its inception. While we would appreciate an ‘edit’ function, we have sort of lived with it. An ‘edit’ button will be nice though.

The acquisition that just went through not too long ago today has more questions surrounding it than answers too. One thing that has already been known with the acquisition is that the current CEO, Parag Agrawal will be leaving the company, though there are no mentions of when that will happen. We also know that Elon Musk is big on “free speech within the bounds of the law”, which is still rather vague but could mean less regulations from Twitter’s end. Elon also says that he wants to make Twitter better with new features and open sourcing the algorithms within Twitter.

What does this mean for Twitter?

Nobody knows, really. When the deal went through, there were plenty of speculations on organisational restructuring. Employees at Twitter are still nervous about their jobs or even compensations if they suddenly become unemployed. So far, there are no mentions on a major restructuring in Twitter yet.

In terms of the Twitter platform itself, you could be seeing the return of multiple names that was banned by Twitter for political correctness and other reasons. We said ‘could’, not ‘will’, so even we are taking that with a pinch of salt for now. Still, in favour of Elon Musk’s “free speech” commitment, we are expecting looser regulations from Twitter and less intervention from the platform in plenty of topics, “fake news” included.

Of course, such high-profile acquisition will attract the attention of Wall Street. That led to a 5% spike of Twitter’s share prices before Wall Street had to stop the trade of Twitter’s stocks. Elon Musk is known to turn many things into gold, and we believe that Twitter’s stocks will continue to increase in value at least for the time being.

The current CEO of Twitter says that there are no planned changes at this time, at least before he leaves. He added though that he is unsure about changers in the future ones the deal closes later this year. The deal is expected to take another six months before Elon fully takes control of Twitter. At least for the next six months, there should not be much in terms of change within and on Twitter as a platform.

*Approximately based on exchange rate of US$ 1 = MYR 4.35 as of 26/04/2022 on xe.com