X, formerly called Twitter, is a social networking website that allows users to post short messages. Each post contains at most 280 characters of text. Users can also attach images or videos to posts. A user’s posts can be read instantly by other people connected through the website. The site’s simplicity has helped it become an important means of communication around the world.
The website was founded in 2006 as Twitter. Its name was changed to X in 2023. The website is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Use.
Users of X connect by becoming followers of one another. This concept is similar to becoming “friends” on other social networking websites, such as Facebook. Users can follow acquaintances, businesses, celebrities, politicians, or even strangers.
A user’s home page displays a stream of posts written by everyone the user is following. Each user also has a simple profile page. These pages display a user’s own posts, along with information about the user. Some people have thousands or even millions of followers, enabling them to spread messages far and wide.
X’s format is sometimes called microblogging because its short posts often resemble snippets of diarylike blog posts. People often reply to each other’s posts, forming short conversations. Users can also repost another user’s post to share it with their own followers. Replies and reposts make up a majority of posts on the site.
X, like most other social media platforms, allows users to use hashtags to highlight keywords in their posts. A hashtag consists of the symbol #, called a hash mark, followed by a word or phrase. Such phrases are typed with no punctuation and no spaces between words. The hashtag helps other users find posts that include the marked term. For example, a user who wants to view posts about Women’s History Month could search for posts with the hashtag #WomensHistoryMonth.
History.
Jack Dorsey, an American software engineer, had the original idea for Twitter. He founded the company with two partners, Evan Williams and Biz Stone. They launched the Twitter website in 2006. In 2010, Twitter officially became available as a mobile app (application) on smartphones.
When Twitter began, the character limit for a single post—then called a “tweet”—was only 140 characters. In 2017, Twitter doubled that limit to 280 characters. Posts written in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean remained limited to 140 characters. This is because information can be communicated with fewer characters in these languages.
Along with text messaging and instant messaging, Twitter helped make communication with short written messages a part of everyday life. Even today, many posts on X are simple “status updates.” They tell what is going on in the poster’s life but lack any critical message. Scholars suggest that such messages help people stay socially connected, especially when they do not see each other often.
As with other new social media services, people began using Twitter in unexpected ways soon after its launch. In particular, the site helped people gather and distribute news. Political activists in Egypt, Iran, and Moldova used Twitter to report government repression and election violations to an international audience of followers. The platform also played an important role in disaster relief. The American Red Cross and Australia’s Country Fire Authority, for example, used the site to gather information and coordinate relief efforts.
Twitter was fined multiple times for violating its users’ privacy. In 2020, European regulators fined Twitter 450,000 euros (about $546,000) because it did not promptly inform regulatory agencies when it discovered a privacy flaw. In 2022, the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) fined Twitter $150 million for misusing users’ personal information. According to the FTC, Twitter told users it collected their personal information for security reasons, but then used that information to profit from targeted advertisements. This violated a previous agreement between Twitter and the FTC.
In the early 2020’s, the total number of Twitter accounts continued to increase. However, the number of people who tweeted frequently—3 to 4 times per week—began to decline. Some common Twitter discussion topics, such as celebrities and e-sports, had become popular on other social media platforms, such as Instagram and TikTok. Many Twitter users interested in these topics began to use other platforms more frequently than Twitter. In 2022, Twitter reported that it had 238 million daily active users.
Twitter was a public company from 2013 until 2022. Investors can buy or sell stock in public companies. In 2022, the South African-born entrepreneur (business developer) Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion. As part of the purchase agreement, Twitter changed from a public company to a privately owned company. Musk stated that he would add new features to Twitter, reduce the amount of spam on the platform, and operate the company more frugally. In 2023, Musk changed the name of Twitter to X.
X, like other social media platforms, is often criticized for failing to control harmful content posted on its platform. X forbids users from harassing other users or threatening violence. It also regulates posts that contain violent or sexual images. However, X’s methods of identifying harmful content are not always effective. For example, automated computer programs may be trained to detect violent threats in the world’s most widely spoken languages. But threats posted in other languages are not detected. Additionally, through reposting, false information can spread extremely quickly to large numbers of people.
See also Social media.
