Her resignation followed ongoing advertiser concerns and repeated public controversies, including antisemitic comments shared by Grok, X’s AI chatbot, just days earlier that sparked outcry. During her tenure, she defended Musk’s decisions in lawsuits and meetings with lawmakers and said most top advertisers had returned to X—though many hadn’t restored previous spending levels. In May 2023, Musk hired veteran advertising executive Linda Yaccarino as CEO, giving her responsibility for the company’s business operations while he focused on product development and technology. She previously had led advertising at NBCUniversal and stood out as one of the few major industry figures who pledged to keep running ads on Twitter after Musk acquired it, even as other advertisers pulled back. In November 2020, Twitter introduced Fleets—temporary posts that disappeared after 24 hours—modeled after Stories on Snapchat (SNAP) and Meta Platforms’ (META) Instagram and Facebook. Seeing a future for the product, Williams, Stone, and Dorsey bought out Odeo and started Obvious Corp. in October 2006 to develop it further.

• In 2022, Twitter announced Elon Musk would acquire it and that Musk was to become the company’s sole owner.
• X says that its priority is to protect and defend the user’s voice and it has guidelines about hate, which say that users “may not target others with abuse or harassment or encourage other people to do so”.
• Now it’s some creepy fake privacy meant to separate people even more and cut non corporate funding avenues for support.
• In 2023, X and Musk became embroiled in controversy about how many of his changes have made the service a less reliable information resource.
• The following month, Twitter, Inc. was created as a corporate entity after an infusion of venture capital, and Dorsey became Twitter’s first chief executive officer (CEO).

Billionaire Elon Musk has hailed Twitter as a bastion for freedom of expression ever since he acquired the social media site two years ago. But over the course of 2024, X, as it is now called, has evolved from what felt like a communal town square into a polarised hub where views and posts seem even more controversial. In March 2016, Twitter replaced its purely chronological timeline with an algorithmic feed that prioritized tweets based on popularity and user behavior. The company finally became profitable in the last quarter of 2017, when it reported 330 million monthly users. Even so, it posted positive earnings in only two of its eight years as a public company. Twitter started as a free SMS-based service with some social networking features and lacked a clear source of revenue.

Others disagree with the X owner’s political beliefs and recent step into American politics as President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) co-lead and unofficial BFF. On January 15, 2009, a tweet by commuter ferry passenger Janis Krums broke the story of the successful water landing of US Airways flight 1549 on the Hudson River in New York City. A hastily snapped camera phone image of passengers disembarking the half-submerged aircraft established Twitter as a breaking news source. The following month, Twitter, Inc. was created as a corporate entity after an infusion of venture capital, and Dorsey became Twitter’s first chief executive officer (CEO). In 2008, Williams ousted Dorsey as CEO, and two years later Williams was replaced as CEO by Chief Operating Officer Dick Costolo.

Why did Elon Musk eliminate the Twitter name?

Advertising revenue fell sharply after many companies withdrew their ads, and the Twitter identity was stripped from the service. She argues that X’s algorithms now “privilege divisive and misleading rhetoric” and suggests that users who post less controversial content have found a reduction in the views. Premium profiles are entitled to more privileges and prominence – and can make money from the engagement they get from other checkmarked profiles. From October, X changed its rules so that instead of basing revenue for individual accounts around ads, it now takes into account likes, shares and comments from other Premium accounts. Although Twitter continued to grow in popularity, it still wasn’t profitable, so the company introduced new features to increase user engagement.

Hannah joined Trusted Reviews as a staff writer in 2019 after graduating with a degree in English from Royal Holloway, University of London. She’s also worked and studied in the US, holding positions as a video production assistant and multimedia consultant at Washington College and has built websites and written content for Hometown Multimedia in Chestertown, Maryland. Musk also rebranded Twitter Blue to X Premium and expanded its features, offering users fewer ads, reply prioritisation, the ability to write and share Articles and access to X’s own Grok AI chatbot. We’ve created this guide to explain everything you need to know about X, including what it is, what’s changed and what happened to the bird app we knew and loved.

2022: Twitter as a public company

He predicts them “needing to have a more personal relationship with the incoming administration”, particularly if they feel increasing pressure over regulation and online safety. When Mr Musk first acquired Twitter, he emphasised the need to house all political opinions and push back against censorship by social media companies and governments. Now the profile, which calls itself a avatrade review “Defender of Western values and culture”, has amassed 131,600 followers (a number that is rapidly growing). It is racking up around 30 million views each day collectively among all of its posts, according to its creator.

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In April 2010, Twitter unveiled promoted tweets—ads that appeared in search results—as its intended primary revenue source. Later that year, it introduced promoted trends, which inserted paid content among trending topics, and promoted accounts, which placed sponsored profiles in users’ follow recommendations. Instagram is for taking pictures of food and posting things about yourself where you’re not looking for feedback other than likes and random comments you’re never going to respond to. Facebook is for your old friends and relatives to keep you up-to-date on who is dead. Instagram and Facebook are filled up with BOTS so you can’t take anything Anybody says including your aunt or mother because they constantly get hacked and Meta does not delete duplicate/scam profiles. Twitter/X is the only legitimate platform for people who want to either debate or argue.It is the best format even going back to when it was run by all of the people doing heavy censorship.

• We’re starting small but thinking big, and we want to know what you think – you can send us your feedback by clicking on the button below.
• Others disagree with the X owner’s political beliefs and recent step into American politics as President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) co-lead and unofficial BFF.
• But as the user base expanded, it became clear the service had outgrown its niche beginnings.
• In 2009, Twitter introduced a blue check mark to verify the identities of public figures and organizations.

Elon Musk’s ‘social experiment on humanity’: How X evolved in 2024

It’s the best design and now with the AI built-in it’s extremely helpful and has become a great source for getting news both from alternative media as well as mainstream sources. Anything I have seen from CNN has come through X, I haven’t watched the news straight off the television in probably two years.Excellent app if you are an intelligent and informed person and want to actually learn/debate. If you want to post pictures of the awesome flan you just bought, Instagram is much better.

Political campaigns discovered the value of Twitter as a communication tool. Today, X is primarily run as a social media service, although Musk has said he wants to turn it into an “everything app” that can be used for shopping, financial transactions, and more, similar to China’s WeChat. They say they know of another account making “$25,000” each month – that account allegedly has 500,000 followers and posts “roughly 30” times a day. Changes – including mass layoffs and alterations to moderation policies on issues like political misinformation – started immediately. In 2022, Twitter announced Elon Musk would acquire it and that Musk was to become the company’s sole owner.

These characters have profiles on the main sites including X, allowing me to interrogate what different accounts were recommended on social media. The accounts are private and do not message real people or have friends. During the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Barack Obama far outpaced his opponent, John McCain, in the social media sphere, amassing almost four times as many Myspace friends and more than 20 times as many Twitter followers. The gap signaled how important a social networking presence would become in future political campaigns.. X, formerly Twitter (2006–2023), is a social media and microblogging service where users share short posts of no more than 280 characters.

In response, Twitter began verifying accounts belonging to celebrities, public officials, and government agencies. Ultimately though – given how many social media giants are based in the US – it is the approach of the American government and president that could have the greatest impact. Sam Freeman, a former Meta employee who now works as an expert in Trust and Safety for a company called Cinder, believes that this will have a broader effect on other social media bosses too.

Newsletter Anmeldung

He has now been offered a government position, leading a new advisory team called the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). Instead, in her view, it is “not a controlled social science experiment but one we’re all a part of”. ​​Earlier this month, an attack at a German market, which killed five people and injured more than 200, was widely debated on X. Much of the discussion centred around the suspect, a German resident originally from Saudi Arabia. German prosecutors have said the investigation is ongoing, but suggested one potential motive for the attack “could have been disgruntlement with the way Saudi Arabian refugees are treated in Germany”.

Bring back Twitter

In French (with a few exceptions), Italian, Romanian, and modern Spanish, ⟨x⟩ was replaced by other letters. In 2023, X and Musk became embroiled in controversy about how many of his changes have made the service a less reliable information resource. European regulators issued a warning to Musk and insisted that he respond with how he is battling illegal misinformation on the website. In July 2022, Twitter sued Musk to force him to buy the company, and in September 2022 Twitter’s shareholders voted to accept Musk’s offer. At the time of Elon Musk’s acquisition in 2022, ad revenue generated 90% of Twitter’s revenue, according to company filings. In September 2013, Twitter filed for an initial public offering and announced the move in a tweet.

Rise of the Twitter ‘media’

Twitter emerged from the podcasting venture Odeo, which was founded in 2004 by Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass. (Williams and Stone had previously worked at Google, and Williams created the popular Web authoring tool Blogger.) Apple announced in 2005 that it would add podcasts to its digital media application iTunes. Odeo’s leadership felt that the company could not compete with Apple and needed a new direction. These features make posts easier to find, share, and organize—and helped X become a central hub for public conversation. BBC InDepth is the new home on the website and app for the best analysis and expertise from our top journalists. Under a distinctive new brand, we’ll bring you fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions, and deep reporting on the biggest issues to help you make sense of a complex world.