What is Elon Musk’s Relationship With the Letter X?
When Elon Musk decided to re-brand Twitter as “X,” it caught a lot of people by surprise. The name Twitter was so iconic, and the Twitter bird logo was so recognizable, that it seemed like a move out of left field.
But, actually, there’s a long history that Elon Musk has with the letter X that dates back more than 20 years. And the letter X is even intertwined with Musk’s personal life. In 2020, he became the father of a new child, and named the boy X.
The early days of X
Back in 1999, Elon Musk came up with the idea of an online bank that would be called “X.” He even went so far as to set up the domain name for it (X.com). But when X.com merged with PayPal, the origins of X faded from memory. Maybe that wouldn’t have been the case if PayPal hadn’t gone on to become one of the most successful companies in the world.
Flash forward to 2017, when Musk decided to acquire the domain name X.com from PayPal. Clearly he had something in mind. And, as we found out later, Musk was already thinking of X as “the everything app” that would be analogous to China’s WeChat. This would be an all-purpose app that would combine social media with all sorts of extra services, including banking and financial services.
At the time, Musk mused about the possibilities of X becoming “the biggest financial institution in the world.” And the letter X was the sort of all-purpose letter that could symbolize the desire to be something big and something for everyone.
The re-branding of Twitter
So, naturally, when Musk decided to acquire Twitter in 2022, the opportunity was ripe to put that X.com domain name to work. When he announced the re-branding of Twitter as X, it was with the goal in mind of making Twitter more than just a sum total of tweets and online conversations.
Top Twitter executives referred to X as “a liberation” from the past. If Twitter had continued as Twitter, only incremental change would have been possible. But if Twitter radically changed its name, then radical, breakthrough change might be possible.
And, indeed, we’ve already seen some examples of the sorts of changes that might be possible. In 2023, Musk founded a new AI company called xAI. But this was not going to be just an AI company - it would be integrated into everything within the “X” family, and that included X itself. In fact, at the current moment, xAI is now the owner of X (and not the other way around).
What could be next?
If history is any guide, Musk will continue to integrate more of his social media and AI initiatives around the letter X. Thus, get ready to see more AI models trained on social media, as well as more social media created by AI. For Elon Musk, X marks the spot for AI and social media.