X (Twitter)

Overview

X, formerly known as Twitter, is a digital microblogging platform where users can post, read, and exchange short messages. First launched in 2006, it has evolved from a text-based service emphasizing brevity into a full-featured, ad-supported social media platform boasting over 557 million monthly active users, approximately 4 billion monthly visits, and an estimated 500 million tweets sent daily.

From the outset, Twitter's defining feature was its 140-character limit, inspired by the space constraints of text messaging. Twitter's publicly available stream of tweets from millions of users helped shape culture and political discourse through real-time user interactions. In 2010, the platform began to monetize through promoted tweets, accounts, and trends.

SpaceX and Tesla cofounder Elon Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022 for $44B. Under Musk, Twitter underwent significant changes, including layoffs of thousands of workers, the introduction of a paid subscription model, and a rebranding as X. Content moderation has become a considerable challenge for the site, and the ease of creating multiple accounts has enabled automated accounts—known as bots—to falsely legitimize specific profiles, perspectives, or ideas.

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