Elon Musk wants to take over world's financial system with X, hints latest biography
Elon Musk
Twitter is now 'X' because social media platform's new owner Elon Musk wanted it to be that way. In Musk's latest biography written by his official biographer Walter Isaacson, details of his Twitter buyout reveal how much the billionaire business magnate was in love with the micro-blogging platform.
Musk's ambition to make an "everything app" that would encompass a person's financial transactions and social connections have been reported upon earlier.
About two decades ago, the new Twitter owner had started a company called X.com which he wanted to gradually make into an "everything app". Later, X.com merged with the PayPal payment service.
Elon Musk, Isaacson writes, wanted to keep X.com as the name of the combined company. His new colleagues resisted.
"PayPal had become a trusted brand name, with a friendly chirpiness similar to that of Twitter, whereas the name X.com conjured up visions of a seedy site you would not talk about in polite company. Musk was ousted and he remains unwavering to this day," Isaacson writes in Elon Musk's latest biography, an excerpt of which was shared by The Times.
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Also watch |Elon Musk to transform X into a super app with calling feature
"If you want to just be a niche player, PayPal is a better name," Isaacson quotes Musk as saying.
"But if you want to take over the world’s financial system, then X is the better name."
Musk runs Twitter 'impulsively'
Isaacson writes that when Musk saw a period of "unnerving success" immediately after Covid pandemic, he exercised some expiring stock options that left him with about $10 billion in cash.
"I didn't want to just leave it in the bank," Isaacson quotes Musk as saying.
"So I asked myself what product I liked, and that was an easy question. It was Twitter."
Isaacson adds that the way Musk bought Twitter and renamed it X, was "a harbinger of the way he now runs in: impulsively and irreverently".
"It is an addictive playground for him. It has many of the attributes of a schoolyard, including taunting and bullying. But in the case of Twitter, the clever kids win followers; they don’t get pushed down the steps and beaten, like Musk was as a kid. Owning it would allow him to become king of the schoolyard," Isaacson writes.
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