Facts about Twitter, formerly X, provide a deeper insight into the inner workings of this social media platform. Learning about this platform as a newbie or a veteran user is fun and interesting. This information is also indispensable, especially when creating a new account or running Twitter or X ads. Below, you’ll learn everything there is to know about this social media platform.
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What Is Twitter? An Overview of the Various Changes on This Platform
When you’re a new user or you just heard about X, you’ll want to know — what is Twitter? It is a micro-blogging social media platform started by Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, and Noah Glass. The co-founders launched this social network in 2006, and people could post on it via SMS.
What you see on X nowadays is significantly different from what the platform was back in the day. For starters, if you have X Premium, your posts can be as long as 25,000 characters.
Without the subscription service, X limits your tweets to 280 characters. Originally, the platform started with a 140-character cap until 2017.
Speaking about subscriptions on Twitter, the platform launched this service in June 2021. During the initial phase, subscribers received the following special features:
- Undo a tweet within 30 seconds after publishing it.
- Enable reader mode to make it easier to go through Twitter threads.
- Customize the app icons and change the color schemes.
- Create bookmark folders to manage various saved tweets.
Under the new ownership, the platform provided additional features to its subscribers. Also, they removed the legacy verification program and bundled the new authentication service with Twitter Blue, now X Premium.
The social media giant also underwent significant rebranding. For starters, this platform no longer goes by the name Twitter. The official name for Twitter is X.
Similarly, this social network now refers to tweets as posts, retweets as reposts, and retweets with comments as quote posts. The platform rebranded Birdwatch, X’s community-driven fact-checker, to Community Notes and Super Follows to Subscriptions.
Twitter to X: A Deep Dive Into This Social Network’s Transformation
As highlighted in this article, Twitter is no longer in the hands of its co-founders. In 2022, billionaire businessman Elon Musk bought this social media giant. Why did he change the platform’s iconic name from Twitter to X?
You need to go back several decades to understand the reasoning behind this decision. Musk co-launched X.com, an online bank, in 1999. After a year, Confinity merged with this financial institution and rebranded to PayPal.
Elon Musk bought the original domain for his former company, i.e., x.com, from PayPal in 2017. If you enter x.com in a desktop or mobile browser, you’ll end up on Twitter.
Before completing the Twitter buyout, he posted about his intentions to purchase the social media company. He wanted to make X into a super app where you can do everything from a single platform.
In other words, he wants the platform to be like Grab and WeChat. Since the acquisition, he’s been working on making his vision a reality. For example, X already has multiple money transmitter licenses in different states. This is part of this plan to allow X users to use the platform as a payment system.
Video and audio calls are available on this social network. Similarly, popular users can earn money via the platform’s Ads Revenue Sharing program.
With X’s cashtags, you can track the price of various stocks and cryptocurrencies without leaving the social media platform. The platform also allows brands that are part of Verified Organizations to post job listings.
5 Facts About Elon Musk Buying Twitter
October 27, 2022, was an important day for Twitter, as Elon Musk became the platform’s new owner. Here are five facts about Elon Musk buying Twitter:
- Elon Musk became Twitter’s largest shareholder in April 2022 after acquiring 9.2% of its shares. He started buying the social network’s shares in January 2022. The social media giant asked the billionaire businessman to become a part of the company’s board.
- Musk’s initial form to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) indicated he would be a passive stakeholder. However, there was an update to the filing, where it became clear he would be an active investor.
- The CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, made an initial offering of $44 billion or $54.20 per share. This is the final amount he paid to acquire the social media company from its co-founders. If the deal didn’t go through, he would have to pay Twitter $1 billion.
- Musk wanted to back out from the deal after claiming the platform’s estimates of fake and bot accounts were inaccurate. However, the social media network sued him to ensure the acquisition went through. After several negotiations, he finally agreed to buy this platform.
- Musk worked with several investors to cover the final cost of acquiring Twitter. He received funding from BNP Paribas, Barclays, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, MUFG, Mizuho Bank, and Société Générale. Qatar Holding, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud, and Larry Ellison also funded the buyout. He also sold Tesla shares to ensure he had the funds to meet his final offer.
4 Facts About Twitter Logo You Must Know
The Twitter logo is no longer the same due to the platform’s efforts to rebrand itself. “X” replaced the iconic blue bird in July 2023. Below are four Twitter facts about the X logo you must know:
- Although the blue bird is synonymous with Twitter, this wasn’t always the case. The original logo was from iStock. Simon Oxley, a graphic designer, created the icon. However, the platform stopped using this logo, as it was against iStock’s terms and conditions.
- The logo everyone associates Twitter with only became the platform’s icon in 2012. Doug Bowman, a creative director and graphic designer, showcased the new logo in an announcement in 2012.
- Until 2012, Twitter called all its logos — Larry the Bird. Larry Joe Bird, aka Larry the Bird, is a National Basketball Association (NBA) legend who played for the Boston Celtics. This changed in 2012, as the platform called its new icon, Twitter Bird.
- While the new ownership was rebranding the platform, they swapped the old logo with an “X.” This was a message from the new owners about its intentions to stick with its vision. The new logo reflects the social network’s significant changes after the buyout. It is also a signal of the new leadership’s intentions to make Twitter an everything app.
Twitter Trivia: A Deeper Look into the Twitterverse
There’s a lot going on within the Twitterverse. The easiest way to see this is to look at fun facts about Twitter. Here is some Twitter trivia you should know:
- Statista states that this social media giant has over 415 million users worldwide. It continues attracting 1.7 million people, who create new accounts on the platform daily.
- At least 250 million people are on this social network every day. They publish posts, interact with content, and read tweets daily. Also, X users spend 30 minutes on average on this platform.
- Community Notes continues to expand, adding new contributors and countries regularly. As of April 2024, this feature is available in over 65 countries, with more than 320,000 contributors.
- The total solar eclipse in 2024 was one of the hottest topics on the platform. Within 24 hours, active users published more than 3.7 million posts. These tweets accumulated 25 million likes, 141 million video views, and 1.2 billion impressions. This shows how current trends continue to dominate conversations on the platform.
- Did you know that men primarily use this platform worldwide? According to Statista, 60.9% of the user base is male, while women account for 39.1%. Even other social media platforms don’t have such a high percentage of male users.
- X is quite popular among the younger generation. According to Pew Research, journalists between 18 and 29 years old account for 83% of the users in this profession. As per Pew Research’s records, 42% of U.S. adult users are 29 years or younger. In other words, younger people are more likely to use this platform than other age groups.
Facts About Twitter: You Cannot Delete Multiple Tweets Without TweetDelete
This article gives you a quick look into the Twitterverse. It is always a blast to learn interesting facts about Twitter.
Did you know this social media platform doesn’t allow you to delete multiple posts simultaneously? Whether you have X Premium or not, you can only remove one tweet at a time.
Unfortunately, this falls short when you want to ensure mistakes in your tweets don’t affect your reputation.
TweetDelete offers features unavailable on X. The custom filter ensures you’ll always find any old tweet from your profile in a few seconds. The bulk-delete tweets utility makes it easy to erase thousands of tweets in a few minutes. Or, you can let the auto-delete task work its magic in the background.
It will delete older tweets from your profile by searching for posts from a certain date range with specific keywords. You can also remove your likes from hundreds of tweets without manually tapping the like button on each post.
These are some of the unfortunate facts about Twitter and its features.
Connect your account with TweetDelete and get access to utilities that aren’t available on X!