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Another day, another headline about Elon Musk.

It seems the pushing and pulling between Musk and Twitter has taken another turn, with the billionaire tech tycoon teasing the possibility of a new social media platform that could be in direct competition with Twitter.

After he flogged nearly eight million Tesla shares worth $6,9 billion before the very real possibility of being forced to purchase Twitter, Musk cryptically mentioned a desire to launch his own site.

This isn’t exactly breaking news, though, as Musk did once mention to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal that he had plans for his own platform, per Business Insider.

Twitter has cause for concern that Musk only entered the deal to acquire the company as a way to compile internal data and then use it to replicate the site.

He’s being pretty transparent about this affair.

Yes.

In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close *and* some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 10, 2022

In response to someone then asking if he has ever thought about creating his own social platform, especially if the Twitter deal “doesn’t come through”, Musk merely answered with:

https://t.co/bOUOejO16Y

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 10, 2022

X.com is currently blank, bar a small ‘x’ in the top left corner, but it apparently has a deeper meaning to Musk. Here’s Gizmodo:

Musk purchased X.com in 2017 from PayPal, of which he is a former CEO. Musk actually co-founded X.com back in 1999 as an online bank, before the website was merged with a competitor in 2000.

Musk then bought X.com back 17 years later, explaining on Twitter that the domain had “great sentimental value” and that the best use of the domain would be as an umbrella website that would lead users to Musk’s other ventures like Tesla and SpaceX.

However, he did suggest something a little different at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting last week:

“I do sort of have a grander vision for what I thought X Corporation could have been back in the day,” Musk said.

“It’s a pretty grand vision and of course that could be started from scratch but I think Twitter would accelerate that by three to five years.”

If X.com became a sort of Twitter, Musk would likely make it without bots or censorship, both of which he has heavily criticised the platform for.

Twitter is adamant that Musk must legally buy the platform at the original price of $44 billion, arguing the world’s richest person signed an ironclad contract earlier this year.

At the end of the day, Musk is preparing to either create his own social media site and/or follow through with his original mission to buy Twitter.

The next headline is incoming…

[source:businessinsider]