Modelled on China‘s WeChat, it could become your one-stop shop for not just getting into arguments online and posting memes, but video calls, podcasts, and even banking.
All while being an internet town square, committed to free speech, where anyone’s views have as much cache as a celebrity, news outlet, or academic – no matter how controversial.
“He always has a grand vision, but in this instance the details have been a quagmire for him,” says Vlismas.
“Perhaps it’s showing you can’t be everything to everyone – and that’s the challenge with an ‘everything app’.
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“It’s got to be a clear vision in terms of what he wants out of it.”
A tumultuous timeline
Musk’s own Twitter timeline was rarely dull, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that once he ruled the roost, Twitter’s own timeline would follow suit.
Skittish advertisers, concerned about Musk’s stance on content moderation, helped see revenues fall and within a month even the prospect of bankruptcy was being mooted.
Musk’s flagship attempt to drive up company income was to offer verification ticks as a paid-for benefit in a subscription that has expanded to include features like an edit button and longer posts.
According to analysis by research group AMPLYFI, which used AI to judge user sentiment on Twitter over time, the furore was “the initial catalyst for things turning sour” for much of the platform’s audience.
“It created chaos,” says Drew Benvie, founder of communications agency Battenhall.
“People don’t know if they’re talking to the real deal.”
Ahead of a year that will include a US presidential election, and with ever-improving AI deepfakes, it’s an issue that could become even more serious.
Other changes have included reinstating banned accounts like those of Andrew Tate and Donald Trump, raising further concerns about the proliferation of hate speech on the platform.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a group X has sued over its damning assessments of its content moderation standards, says Musk has welcomed back a host of bad actors “with open arms”.
Speaking to mark the Muskiversary, CCDH founder Imran Ahmed condemned it as a “grave betrayal of users, advertisers and the wider public”.
That, coupled with the gutting of the company’s trust and safety teams, damaged Twitter’s reputation as a place to seek out verified news – an issue brought home by the Israel-Hamas war.
A name so embedded in modern society that “tweet” had entered the Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries, now one which would have once done nothing but arouse suspicion in your browsing history.
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Of course, some may have spotted an obvious trend and concluded he simply likes the letter X.
Not only is it part of the name of his successful rocket company, but one of his children; his AI start-up; and an internet banking firm he co-founded that became PayPal.
Social media expert Beth Caroll, of Wunderman Thompson, is sceptical of Musk’s apparent plans.
“There’s a vague possibility he could have this bigger picture idea, this super app like a WeChat, and if he were to deliver that then he might have a viable product,” she says.
“But for now he has just decimated the business.”
Indeed, earlier this year the company was valued at less than a third of the $44bn Musk paid for it.
Even the hiring of Linda Yaccarino, an experienced figure from NBCUniversal, as chief executive has done little to repair the monetary or reputational damage.
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1:14
Musk to start charging people to use X
Can Musk really have it all?
Yet despite it all, for its remaining users – whether enthusiastic or reluctant – X remains best at this particular type of social media, where real-time updates reign supreme.
For Dr Annmarie Hanlon, lecturer in digital and social marketing at Cranfield School of Management, would-be rivals from the “clunky” Mastodon to Meta‘s “basic” Threads have failed to offer a comparable experience.
“The everything app is still a work in progress,” she says.
“But when Threads opened, everyone said ‘this is the death of Twitter’. And it hasn’t been.”
With seven weeks to go until the US goes to the polls, Sky’s dedicated team of correspondents goes on the road to gauge what citizens in key swing states make of the choice for president.
This week they focus on the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
Mark Stone travels to Florida where the foiled attack took place, while James Matthews has been finding out more about the suspected would-be assassin in his hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina.
Plus, Martha Kelner attended a Trump town hall in Flint, Michigan, to hear him speak for the first time after the attempt on his life, and asked voters if it will impact the way they vote in November.
A previous Titan submersible dive to the Titanic was aborted due to an apparent mechanical failure, one of the mission’s passengers has said.
Fred Hagen had paid a fee to go on a dive in the Titan in 2021, two years before it imploded and killed all five passengers onboard.
He told a US Coast Guard panel investigating the tragedy on Friday that his trip was aborted underwater when the Titan began malfunctioning and it was clear they weren’t going to reach the Titanic wreck site.
“We realised that all it could do was spin around in circles, making right turns,” Mr Hagen said. “At this juncture, we obviously weren’t going to be able to navigate to the Titanic.”
He said the Titan resurfaced and the mission was scrapped.
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A Republican backed by Donald Trump in his bid to be North Carolina’s governor denied reports he called himself a “black nazi” on an online message board.
CNN reported Thursday that Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson posted racial and sexual comments on a pornography website more than a decade ago.
In a video posted on social media, the Republican nominee said he would not leave the race over “salacious tabloid lies”.
“We are staying in this race. We are in it to win it. And we know that with your help, we will.”
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Mr Robinson also referenced the CNN report and said: “Let me reassure you the things that you will see in that story – those are not the words of Mark Robinson.
“You know my words. You know my character.”
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The US outlet reported Mr Robson wrote of being aroused by a memory of “peeping” women in gym showers when he was 14.
He was also said to have used a racial slur when discussing civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, referred to himself as a “black nazi,” and said: “I’d take Hitler over any of the shit that’s in Washington right now.”
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CNN said it matched details of the account on the pornographic website forum to other online accounts held by Robinson by comparing usernames, a known email address and his full name.
Sky News has not verified whether the account is linked to Mr Robinson.
Eight minutes after the report was published on Thursday, vice president Kamala Harris’ campaign started sharing videos of Donald Trump praising Mr Robinson.
One video from the campaign on X shows the former president at a March rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he called the lieutenant governor “Martin Luther King times two”.
“I think you’re better than Martin Luther King. I think you are Martin Luther King times two,” Mr Trump said.
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Scott Lassiter, a GOP Senate candidate in a swing district in the state, called on Mr Robinson to “suspend his campaign to allow a quality candidate to finish this race”.
Mr Trump’s campaign also appeared to be distancing itself from Mr Robinson.
The ex-president did not refer to the controversy when he addressed Jewish donors on Thursday night, instead vowing to be ‘the best friend Jewish Americans ever had”.