The new feature from Elon Musk’s X aims to disrupt an old-school technology: the phone number. The feature is for users of X’s Chat service: They can now use “X Numbers” to call and message each other, rather than sharing phone numbers or X user handles. It’s a part of Musk’s long-stated goal to transform X into an app-for-everything, where users message, shop, talk, develop ideas, find answers to questions, and so on. Here’s how it works.
The XChat account explained in a post that X Numbers are powerful because you can “share yours with anyone you want to contact you, even if you don’t follow them. It’s an optional way for people to message or call you, without you needing to accept requests or follow them back.”
Social media systems like X (and before it transformed, Twitter) typically rely on users following each other before automatically allowing people to message – it keeps the apps quieter, and less jammed with unwanted messaging requests.
The new system is opt-in, and skirts around this issue in a few ways.
It’s easy to imagine uses where an X Number is handy: for example, you meet someone at a tech conference, and you want to chat but you don’t want to fork over your real phone number, or go through the rigmarole of finding them on X and following their account. Instead, you exchange your X Number, and the chat can simply start.
Creating an X Number is optional, X’s blog post notes, and has no impact on how other people see your account when they message, if you’re already connected on the platform. Once you enable it, people who know the private number can message you directly into your inbox, or even initiate a call if you’ve turned on permissions for this kind of interaction.
Here’s how you turn it on: Open the app, and type in your PIN if asked. Go to the inbox dropdown, click on “Number” and enable it. You can also disable the number from there, or share the number with others.
This menu also gives you access to what may be X Number’s most powerful feature: “Refresh.” Tapping this erases your old number and issues you a new one. The company’s post notes: “People who only have the old number will not be able to use it to reach you as a new contact.” This prevents your number from being abused, and arguably it’s a much simpler way to manage personal contact leak risks than having to, say, change your actual traditional phone number.
Before you dismiss this news as more nonsense from Musk’s businesses, it’s worth remembering that XChat is designed to rival peers like Meta’s WhatsApp.
WhatsApp may not be as well known in the US as other messaging systems, but it’s wildly popular around the world, with some three billion monthly active users. That’s just over one in every three people on the planet. And in recent months, WhatsApp has been slow-launching a username system so that people can contact each other via its messaging system without having to know a phone number (which can top 12 digits for some international numbers).
Both services are essentially taking different approaches to deprecating old-fashioned phone numbers as a way to contact people.
Think about it: How many people’s phone numbers do you remember? How many phone numbers do you think Gen-Z WhatsApp users know? Given that apps like XChat and WhatsApp send messages, photos, and calls over data rather than the traditional voice channel available to cell phone users, why does anyone even need to know a phone number any more?
There are implications here for businesses who need to share their contact details with clients and suppliers. For now, phone numbers still have a purpose, but for younger people things are changing. It’s easy to imagine that sharing, say, an X Number for a business may be more favourable than giving out personal phone info. It may even be simpler than giving out your WhatsApp username, which can’t be changed as quickly as an X Number.
One last thing to think about: In March last year, Musk’s XAI company bought his social media platform, X, for US$45bil (RM183.68bil) – a move Musk explained by noting “xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent.”
Then this year, before it IPO’d, SpaceX merged XAI into itself. Remember, SpaceX operates the Starlink space Internet system that also has a direct-to-cellphone service effectively spanning the globe. If anyone in the world is in a better position to deprecate the old phone numbers system, it’s Musk. – Inc./Tribune News Service
