X (social network)
American social networking service / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
X, commonly referred to by the name of its predecessor, Twitter, is a social networking service operated by American company X Corp. With over 500 million users, it is one of the world's largest social media websites and the fifth-most visited website in the world.[4][5] Users can share short text messages, images, and videos in posts and like or repost other users' content.[6] X also includes direct messaging, video and audio calling, bookmarks, lists and communities; and Spaces, a social audio feature.
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Type of site | Social networking service |
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Available in | Multilingual |
Founded | July 23, 2023; 10 months ago (2023-07-23), in San Francisco, California, U.S. |
Predecessor(s) | |
Area served | Worldwide, except blocking countries |
Owner | X Corp. (2023–present) |
Founder(s) | Elon Musk |
Chairman | Elon Musk |
CEO | Linda Yaccarino |
URL | x.com |
Registration | Required[lower-alpha 2] |
Users | 550 million MAU (September 2023)[3] |
Current status | Active |
Native client(s) on | |
Written in |
X is the successor of Twitter, which was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams, and was renamed to X in July 2023. X was created after Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X in 2023. X functions almost identically to Twitter, but differs from it in some of its features, such as Community Notes, ability to monetize accounts, integration with xAI's Grok chatbot, and the verification function being available to whoever can pay for it, as opposed to Twitter’s verification going to accounts with high followings. Musk has stated that he plans to turn X into an "everything app", similarly to WeChat.[7]
The service has gained much controversy since launching, such as the release of the Twitter Files and a number of journalists being suspended from the platform, relaxation of transgender hate conduct policies, and temporary measures such as media outlets labeled as "state-affiliated" and the restrictions to viewing tweets. After stepping down to CTO, Musk and the platform remained the subject of criticism over viral misinformation and disinformation, an increase in hate speech such as anti-LGBT rhetoric, as well as a number of antisemitism controversies. In response to certain claims, X Corp. has served lawsuits against nonprofit organizations Media Matters and the Center for Countering Digital Hate for their analysis. Commentators have described it as a "free speech free-for-all",[8] "free-for-all hellscape",[9] and as a right-wing social network.[10][11] The platform garnered favorable attention from conservatives and Republicans in the United States.[12]