Social media platform X suffered global outages for just over an hour on Thursday 21st December 2023.
According to Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports, more than 47,000 U.S. users encountered issues with X and X Pro.
Some users in the UK were also unable to view posts on the site with the message ‘Welcome to X!’ X, (formerly Twitter), is owned by Elon Musk which he bought for $44 billion (£35 billion) in 2022.
The hashtag #TwitterDown started trending within minutes of reports of the outages emerging. But the outage was short-lived, with users able to access the platform again after just over an hour. Since Mr Musk bought the platform, it has been experiencing a loss of advertising revenue.
He has also been accused of allowing antisemitic posts next to advertising. X sued a left-leaning pressure group, Media Matters for America, which made the accusation.
Last month, Elon Musk slammed advertisers that left X, saying they would kill the social media platform.
Unfortunately, X has been attracting the wrong kind of attention in recent months – the question is, can it weather the storm?
It has been a turbulent time at Twitter since Musk’s acquisition and the subsequent renaming of the company to X.
X is a subsidiary of X Holdings Corp., which is owned by Elon Musk. X has faced several issues and controversies since its inception, such as advertiser boycott, declining user base, staff layoffs, and more recently accusations of antisemitism and even more recently of a profane outburst levelled against X advertisers.
What a mess
Elon Musk launches attack on X advertisers in a profanity-laced outburst.
Musk has slammed advertisers that have left X, warning they will kill the social media platform. At an event in New York, he accused companies that have joined an advertising boycott of the site formerly known as Twitter of trying to blackmail him.
Musk tells X (Twitter) advertisers to go ‘f**k yourselves,’ but admits it will die without them: Despite this, Musk refused to accept responsibility for the impact of his statements on X’s ability to do business.
Instead, the billionaire insisted that if X (Twitter) went under, the blame would be entirely on the advertisers who fled as opposed to his decisions as its owner which more likely pushed them away.
His message to advertisers leaving X of: ‘Go f**k yourself’ – didn’t help matters as he admits responding to anti-Semitic post on X was one of the most foolish things he’s done on the platform.
Elon Musk is reported to have said on Wednesday 29th November 2023 that he regretted his November 15th tweet allegedly endorsing an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
Is the death knell of X and of a $44 billion investment?
Musk should be a force for good in the world – could that still happen?
In July 2023, Elon Musk rebranded Twitter to X – another step in his master plan to emulate Chinese super app WeChat.
Mr Musk has long said that he wants to transform his social media firm, which he bought last year for $44 billion, into a much larger platform.
He has previously praised WeChat – a so-called ‘everything app‘ that combines chat, dating, payments and social media – and has said creating something “even close to that with Twitter… would be an immense success”.
In a post on X this week, Mr Musk said that over the coming months, ‘we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world’.
He will hope that growing X will lead to a revenue recovery – the company has lost almost half its advertising revenue since Mr Musk bought it, and it is struggling under a heavy debt load.
Established businesses
He has successfully disrupted several industries with his ventures such as Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company. He may be able to bring some fresh ideas and solutions to the social media space with X. It will be interesting to see if he adopts an existing digital payment system or develops his own. XRP, for instance – could be a good fit.
What is WeChat?
WeChat is a ‘super-app’ that combines messaging, social media, payments, e-commerce, entertainment, news, and more. It is owned by Tencent, one of China’s largest tech companies, and has over 1.2 billion monthly active users, mostly in mainland China.
Everything App
WeChat users can do almost anything within the app, from ordering food to booking tickets to paying bills, without leaving the app. WeChat also hosts millions of mini-apps that are created by third-party developers and businesses to offer various services and functions to users. It is like WhatsApp, Facebook, Apple Pay, Uber, Amazon, Tinder and a whole lot more rolled into one. Launched by technology giant Tencent in 2011. WeChat is now used by almost all of China’s 1.4 billion pupulation (1.2 billion users seems to be the latest concensus).
Will it work in the West?
WeChat’s huge success in China is arguably down to two major factors. For one, most people in China access WeChat on smartphones, rather than desktop computers, due to the relatively late development of the internet in the country. And two, China’s lack of competition regulation – which contrasts with most Western countries – allows an app like WeChat to potentially effectively block rival platforms.
Could Mr Musk make a similar app work outside China? We may be finding out soon – and experts believe it may all depend on digital payments and his ‘system’ to implement this everyday task.
A major difference between China and the West is the widespread adoption of digital payment technology.
While shops in China are legally obliged to accept cash, in practice, digital payments are far more common.
This difference, may be an obstacle to Mr Musk’s ambitions. It will take the Western world longer to implement a truly cashless or credit card free society.
Why does Musk want to emulate WeChat?
Elon Musk has been an admirer of WeChat for a long time. He once said that WeChat is ‘so usable and helpful to daily life‘ in China, and that he wanted to achieve something similar with Twitter, no X. He also said that buying Twitter was an ‘accelerant’ to creating X, the everything app.
X The company likely to bring you the ‘Super’ App or the ‘Everything’ App
Mr Musk has hinted that he plans to add more features and functionalities to Twitter, such as video, communications, and financial services. He also said that the Twitter name did not make sense in the new context, so he decided to rename it as X, a brand that he has used before for his online banking business that later became PayPal.
Dystopia or Utopia – A dark sideor a force for good?
Is the Super App a natural progression and development for good or yet another infringement on our freedom, liberty and privacy. Is it even necessary?
In China, we have witnessed a level of state control interference over the internet that has reportedly made it extremely dangerous for people to speak out against the government on WeChat.
It is not unusual for dissenting voices to have their accounts suspended for days or weeks for something they have said in Chats or on Moments.
Even people sharing seemingly uncontroversial information have found themselves on the wrong side of government censors and had their accounts and chat groups shut down.
Digital life footprint
Everything Everywhere – a super ‘system’ monitoring what you do, what you buy, where you go, when, how, who you talk to, what you say – all your movements, comments, discussions and activity will be known by someone else, somewhere, even your private discussions, holiday activity and medical details will be visible in the ‘system’.
Some may say this has happened already, but this ‘super-app’ will be a massive step closer to ‘life without privacy’.
Threads is a new app, owned by Meta (Facebook), and built by theInstagram team, for sharing public conversations akin to Twitter. You log in using your Instagram account and posts can be up to 500 characters long and include links, photos, and videos with a 5 minute limit. Threads is Meta’s first app envisioned to be compatible with an open social networking protocol
Threads is seen by many as a direct competitor toTwitter, the social media platform owned by billionaire Elon Musk. Threads has been setting records for user growth since its launch on July 5, 2023, with politicians, celebrities, news creators and users joining the platform. Threads surpassed 100 million user ‘sign-ups’ within five days of launch according to information from Meta.
Projected to create revenue of $8 billion by 2025
Threads is projected to contribute a staggering$8 billion to Meta’s annual revenue by 2025. The report further highlights that Threads has already garnered 1 million sign-ups and is on track to reach an impressive milestone of 1 billion users in the near future.
User drop-off to be expected?
However, some recent news reports suggest that Threads has encountered challenges in retaining its users and competing with Twitter. Threads ‘daily active users’ is reporteded to have fallen from 49 million two days after its launch, to 23.6 million users about three weeks later in July 2023, according to reports. The app’s average usage time also fell from 21 minutes to 6 minutes over the same timeframe.
Twitter rebrands as X and kills off blue bird logo
Twitter, the social media platform, has undergone a major rebranding, changing its name to X and replacing its iconic blue bird logo with a simple black-and-white X. The move was announced by the company’s owner, Elon Musk, who reportedly said he wanted to create a “super app” that would transform the global ‘town square’.
New Logo
Musk and Twitter’s chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, posted pictures of the new logo projected on the side of Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, California. They also changed profile pictures and bios to reflect the new brand identity. The desktop version of the app has already switched to the new logo, while the mobile version is expected to follow soon.
My last tweet – says the BLUE bird
Musk is reported to have said he was looking to change Twitter’s logo because he wanted to “embody the imperfections in us all that make us unique”. He also said he had a personal affinity for the letter X, which he also used for his other ventures, such as SpaceX and X.com. Yaccarino said the rebrand was an exciting new opportunity to make a fresh “big impression” and go further than Twitter.
Rebranding
The rebranding of Twitter marks the biggest change to the platform since Musk began his tumultuous tenure. Among the changes have been sacking thousands of staff, locking verification checkmarks behind a paywall, reinstating banned accounts like those of Andrew Tate and Donald Trump, and applying reading limits.
The reaction from users and marketers has been mixed, with some praising the bold move and others criticising it as unnecessary and confusing. Some have also questioned whether the new logo infringes on the trademarks of other companies that use similar designs, such as Tesla and Xbox.
The company has not yet revealed whether other aspects of the platform, such as tweets, hashtags, and handles, will also be changed to match the new brand name.
