“Twitter Inc.” no longer exists as a company — technically, anyways. According to Slate, a week ago Twitter submitted court documents in its ongoing case against right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer, stating the company’s merger with an entity called X Corp. The filing states, “Twitter, Inc. has been merged into X Corp. and no longer exists.”
Serial tweeters, worry not: the platform still exists. For now. No public announcement has been made by Twitter (ahem, X Corp.) regarding the change thus far, and we’re not yet sure what the merger means for the social media platform, or whether the shift holds any significance outside of being a shadowy, illuminati-esque corporate move.
When Elon Musk acquired USD$44 billion for Twitter last October, he expressed a desire to turn Twitter into an “everything app.” This concept isn’t foreign to Chinese social networking apps like WeChat, where various functions from messaging to digital payment to multimedia are centralised into one “super app.” The problems inherent in a centralised “super app” magnify ongoing concerns about big tech monopolies, not to mention Twitter’s ongoing (ahem, X Corp.’s) swathe of litigation which includes former employees suing for violation of labour laws; the company suing the Indian government — its 3rd-largest user base — over censorship concerns; former vendors suing for over USD$14 million in unpaid bills.
Suffice to say, Twitter (X Corp.) isn’t in a great place at the moment. And though we can still tweet to our little hearts’ content, we don’t know whether the platform as we know it will be around for much longer. Will we soon see the blue bird become an X? Only time will tell.
This story first appeared in Lifestyle Asia Hong Kong
