5 ms·

Elon Musk founded X.com before it bought one of its competitors and changed its name to PayPal. He bought the domain name back from PayPal in 2017 and had been

by hosh 3y ago

Elon Musk founded X.com before it bought one of its competitors and changed its name to PayPal. He bought the domain name back from PayPal in 2017 and had been sitting on it for a while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com It looks like this isn't a rebranding so much as making an "everything app". > On October 4, 2022, Elon Musk described his acquisition of Twitter as "an accelerant to creating X, the everything app".[28] This has been linked to x.com.[29] In conversation with Ron Baron a month later, Musk said he will execute the X product plan "with some improvements" which will make Twitter "the most valuable financial institution in the world."[30] Well, it'll be interesting whether he succeeds or fails. But this does not look like it is impulsive.

libraryatnight 3y ago
Probably still can't believe nobody likes his cool domain name.
jkestner 3y ago
"If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we'll make go live worldwide tomorrow" sounds impulsive to me. A rebranding would make more sense at the point where you actually roll out those everything features. Him being a marketing engineer, I guess he just had to stay in the conversation this week.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  the people he's marketing to will eat that shit up. those who are already looking at him skeptically will not care and were already on the way out / not using the app. dumb, but riding the hype train is really his only play IMO.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago
  It’s marketing and storytelling. The impulsiveness and crowd sourcing writes the headline itself. I’m not implying it’s a super calculated masterplan, more that he just knows it’ll grab headlines and mindshare cheaper than any paid marketing launch ever could.
paulvnickerson 3y ago
Agreed. Musk has been talking about this for a long time, if you’ve followed him at all.
FireBeyond 3y ago
> Elon Musk founded X.com before it bought one of its competitors and changed its name to PayPal. Elon's company merged with Confinity. Confinity was already well underway with PayPal (owned trademarks, patents, and the domain name) at the time of the merger, and notably, had a working MVP. I say "notably" because when Elon was initially selected as CEO, he spent his tenure trying to throw away this working MVP because it was written in Java on Solaris, which he didn't know, so he wanted it rewritten in Classic ASP so he could better understand the codebase. A few months (four, IIRC) of stubbornness about that, and the board had had enough, and removed him as the CEO.
jklinger410 3y ago
> But this does not look like it is impulsive. Believe it or not, with all that being said, it still looks like it is impulsive.

by hosh 3y ago

libraryatnight 3y ago

Probably still can't believe nobody likes his cool domain name.

jkestner 3y ago

"If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we'll make go live worldwide tomorrow" sounds impulsive to me. A rebranding would make more sense at the point where you actually roll out those everything features. Him being a marketing engineer, I guess he just had to stay in the conversation this week.

red-iron-pine 3y ago
the people he's marketing to will eat that shit up. those who are already looking at him skeptically will not care and were already on the way out / not using the app. dumb, but riding the hype train is really his only play IMO.
whywhywhywhy 3y ago
It’s marketing and storytelling. The impulsiveness and crowd sourcing writes the headline itself. I’m not implying it’s a super calculated masterplan, more that he just knows it’ll grab headlines and mindshare cheaper than any paid marketing launch ever could.

paulvnickerson 3y ago

Agreed. Musk has been talking about this for a long time, if you’ve followed him at all.

FireBeyond 3y ago

> Elon Musk founded X.com before it bought one of its competitors and changed its name to PayPal. Elon's company merged with Confinity. Confinity was already well underway with PayPal (owned trademarks, patents, and the domain name) at the time of the merger, and notably, had a working MVP. I say "notably" because when Elon was initially selected as CEO, he spent his tenure trying to throw away this working MVP because it was written in Java on Solaris, which he didn't know, so he wanted it rewritten in Classic ASP so he could better understand the codebase. A few months (four, IIRC) of stubbornness about that, and the board had had enough, and removed him as the CEO.

jklinger410 3y ago

> But this does not look like it is impulsive. Believe it or not, with all that being said, it still looks like it is impulsive.