Latest news of the domain name industry

Recent Posts

Musk prematurely announces Twitter is now X

Kevin Murphy, July 24, 2023, 12:04:05 (UTC), Gossip

Elon Musk has declared that Twitter is rebranding as X, using x.com, apparently as the latest stage of his ongoing mission to destroy the company he acquired last year for lulz.

At 1744 UTC yesterday, Musk tweeted:

The logo on the Twitter web site has now changed to a minimalist X, which was later projected onto the walls of Twitter headquarters in San Francisco.

For me, and others around the world, x.com still resolves to a standard GoDaddy parking page, advertising sofas. Others have reported experiencing the redirect to twitter.com as intended.

It can theoretically take a day or more for name server changes to propagate throughout the entire DNS, due to caching and time-to-live settings, but in my experience with GoDaddy it has never taken more than a few minutes.

Still, it would be smart to make sure your new domain is actually working before announcing a rebranding.

Musk first owned x.com — one of a handful of single-letter .com names available — in the 1990s, when it was the original brand of the company that became PayPal. After he sold PayPal, the domain went with the company to eBay. But Musk reacquired the domain for an undisclosed sum in 2017.

He seems to have an obsession with the letter. His space flight company is called SpaceX. Tesla has a model X. He even named his kid X.

I’m reminded of another eccentric tech entrepreneur who obsessed over a single-letter domain, to the extent that it ultimately harmed his company.


If you find this post or this blog useful or interestjng, please support Domain Incite, the independent source of news, analysis and opinion for the domain name industry and ICANN community.

Tagged: ,

Comments (5)

  1. Peter says:

    Woke mind virus is strong with this one. You can’t even help yourself with using language like “he wants to DESTROY his company.” Totally out of it. I wish you all the best in your bubble world. Censored already?

  2. Whether you hate him or love him, this news is great for the domain name industry. Musk gambles $42 billion on a hige brand, that the world is already is acquainted with, on a domain name. That will bring a lot of attention to the reason of “why”. Maybe he’s nuts but who cares. Most companies spend millions on Google to be seen and found but he decides to use a domain name instead. The more press this gets the better for addresses instead of search.

  3. Matthias Pfeifer says:

    Next step could be applying for .twitter.

    scnr.

Add Your Comment