Elon Musk teases X.com social media site as Twitter lawsuit rolls along

On Tuesday night, Aug 9, when prompted by the Tesla Owners Silicon Valley Twitter account about forming his own social media company if the Twitter deal died, Musk dropped a curious URL. — Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue/TNS

If you can’t buy ‘em, beat ‘em.

Elon Musk, currently embroiled in a lawsuit with Twitter, the social media company he made a US$44bil (RM195.66bil) bid to purchase back in April, appears to be trying to compete with the company he once coveted. On Tuesday night, Aug 9, when prompted by the Tesla Owners Silicon Valley Twitter account about forming his own social media company if the Twitter deal died, Musk dropped a curious URL.

Musk did not elaborate further about X.com, and the link directs to a blank landing page, save for a lowercase “x” in the top left corner.

X.com refers to a financial services company that Musk co-founded in 1999, which merged with a company called Cofinity the following year. Cofinity was the Silicon Valley-based software company that created PayPal, which assumed both companies' names in 2000. Musk was briefly CEO of the merged PayPal until he was replaced by the company’s co-founder Peter Thiel in September 2000.

In 2017, Musk bought back the x.com domain name from PayPal for an undisclosed sum for what he called “sentimental reasons”. The 2002 US$1.5bil sale of PayPal to eBay netted Musk somewhere between US$160mil and US$180mil, meaning that x.com is largely responsible for the billionaire entrepreneur we know and (some of us) love today.

On July 11, 2017, Musk tweeted: “No plans right now, but it has great sentimental value to me,” in response to the purchase. There have been no x.com updates until today, if you can call it that. – San Antonio Express-News/Tribune News Service