Elon Musk Posts X.com on Twitter, Hinting at Potential Social Media Site of His Own

Elon Musk arrives for the 2022 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on May 2, 2022. Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk on Aug. 10 referred to his own website as a potential rival to Twitter if his $44 billion deal to purchase the social media platform ultimately doesn’t go through.

The reference came in response to a question from one of his followers.

“Have you thought about creating your own social platform? If [the] Twitter deal doesn’t come through,” asked a Twitter user.

“X.com” Musk replied.

Musk, the world’s richest person, didn’t disclose specifics.

It’s not the first time that Musk, who has questioned Twitter’s attitude toward free speech, hinted at launching a new social media platform.

In a March 28 post on Twitter, Musk said he was “giving serious thought” to the option, without giving details. The post was in response to a user asking if he planned to create a platform that would consist of an open source algorithm, prioritize free speech, and minimize propaganda.

Musk also raised the option while discussing his interest in Twitter and the potential of joining the firm’s board with Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and chairman Bret Taylor on March 27, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

“As part of that discussion, Mr. Musk stated that he was considering various options with respect to his ownership, including potentially joining the Twitter Board, seeking to take Twitter private or starting a competitor to Twitter,” read the document.

X.com

X.com, one of the few single-letter website addresses, was named after an online financial service startup co-founded by Musk in 1999. The company was merged with its competitor Confinity Inc., which was eventually rebranded as PayPal before it was bought by eBay in 2002.

Musk repurchased the domain name from PayPal in 2017. He explained on Twitter that the website has “great sentimental value,” though he had no plans for it at that time.

Currently, the website contains nothing but a tiny black “X” in the left corner. The blanket web page appears to be the same as it was five years ago, according to a screenshot taken by Business Insider in 2017.

But during Tesla’s annual stakeholder meeting on Aug. 4, Musk said, “I do sort of have a grander vision for what I thought X.com or X Corporation could have been back in the day.”

He added that Twitter would “help accelerate” the “pretty grand vision” that he’d been thinking about by “three to five years.”

The Twitter headquarters in San Francisco on April 26, 2022. Amy Osborne/AFP via Getty Images

Twitter Legal Battle

The indication that his X.com could be a potential Twitter competitor came amid Musk’s legal battle with Twitter.

A new filing with the SEC published on Aug. 9 disclosed that Musk sold another $6.9 billion of his shares in Tesla.

In a separate post on Aug. 10, the chief executive of the electric vehicle maker said the latest selloffs were done in the “hopefully unlikely” event that he was eventually forced to buy the social media firm.

“In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close *and* some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock,” Musk said on Twitter.

Musk filed to withdraw from his multibillion-dollar acquisition agreement with Twitter in July after claiming that the San Francisco-based company had failed to provide the information needed to establish how many automated bots and fake accounts are on the platform.

Lawyers for the Tesla CEO claimed that for nearly two months he had sought data and information necessary to “make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform” which was “fundamental to Twitter’s business and financial performance” but that Twitter had failed to provide such information.

Twitter sued Musk shortly after to force him to follow through with the deal and hold him “accountable to his contractual obligations,” according to Taylor.

Musk then countersued Twitter on July 29, although a public version of that lawsuit is not yet available.

A five-day trial has been set for Oct. 17, 2022, in the Delaware Chancery Court.

Katabella Roberts contributed to the report.