- [Narrator] SpaceX,
the Tesla Model X,
xAI.
- I don't know very many people
who might say they have a favorite letter
but with Elon Musk, it's very clear it's X.
- [Narrator] And now Twitter joins the ranks
of the billionaire's other companies
as its name switches to X.
But while the name is new,
the URL x.com isn't.
It's the latest chapter in a story
that Musk started more than two decades ago.
- I think x.com could absolutely be
a multi-billion dollar bonanza.
- [Narrator] Here's why the previous x.com didn't stick
and what it's past can tell us about the app's future.
- Oh, X, X. - Yeah?
- You will be the letter of the day?
- Ah, you bet I will.
(all cheering ang laughing)
- [Narrator] Musk launched the original x.com in 1999
as a banking site after selling his first startup, Zip2.
- x.com, In his conception at that time,
was going to be the one-stop shop for financial services.
- [Narrator] Jimmy Soni is the author of "The Founders,"
a book about the beginning of PayPal.
He spent six years interviewing Musk and his colleagues
about the early days of the company.
- He thought it was, as he put it to me,
quote, "The coolest URL on the internet."
- I thought, well, if we can combine
all types of financial services in one,
so you can have, like, mortgages
and like, basically all your entire financial relationship
seamlessly integrated together in one place online,
that would be cool.
- [Narrator] According to Soni,
Musk thought x.com had advantages.
It was short, making it easier to type into a browser
and helpful for naming different products.
- X as a digit, as a variable allows you to say,
"X checking, X PayPal, X loans, X this, X click, X that."
So the idea was that X was a kind of hub
and from it, would emerge all these other financial spokes.
- [Narrator] But this vision for Musk's site didn't pan out.
In 2000, x.com merged with Confinity,
the company that owned PayPal,
a peer-to-peer payment product.
And founders, Musk, Max Levchin, Peter Thiel,
and other executives disagreed on several things.
One was the name.
- Some of the x.com people believe
that X is a touch salacious.
It's a little confusing.
It's even sinister.
They hear this directly from customers.
- [Narrator] Money was also a problem.
The company wasn't making a profit yet,
and was reimbursing customers who had been defrauded online.
- The PayPal folks, the Confinity team,
Max and Peter's team are saying to themselves,
"Listen we don't have a lot of runway.
Fraud is very, very high.
The economy is clearly collapsing,
and we have this successful product called PayPal.
We should put all our eggs in that basket."
- [Narrator] Musk was eventually forced out of the company
and temporarily left behind x.com
and his ambitions for the site.
But he came back to the URL.
In 2017, Musk repurchased the domain,
tweeting that "it held sentimental value to him."
- He held onto it and held onto the ideas for 20 plus years
and now he's trying to bring them back to life.
- [Narrator] Musk says that the PayPal that emerged
in the years after he left the company
didn't match the vision he had for x.com.
- If PayPal had executed the plan
that I wanted to execute on,
I think you would probably be the most valuable company
in the world. - Yeah.
- Or be called X,
but it would be the most valuable company in the world.
- [Narrator] He told the All-In podcast last year
prior to his purchase of Twitter
that he wanted to create an app
that emulates WeChat from China.
- If you're in China,
it's basically you kind of live on WeChat.
It does everything.
It's sort of like Twitter plus PayPal
plus a whole bunch of other things.
And all roll into one was actually a great interface
and it's really an excellent app.
- [Narrator] Purchasing Twitter opened up another chance,
but this time must had more to work with.
- When Elon talked about why he was buying Twitter,
he saw it as jump starting his grander ambitions for X.
And with that acquisition in late 2022,
he was getting a huge user base
that had already grown accustomed
to coming to Twitter on a daily basis.
- [Narrator] Musk said in a tweet
that the shift to X reflects Twitter's expanded capabilities
since he took over the site.
Saying the name Twitter made more sense
when it was just 140 character messages
going back and forth.
But he and Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino
hinted at a future for the site
that could look more like Musk's original vision.
Advances in tech since 1999 could help X succeed
where x.com failed.
- I think that when Elon was trying to do x.com in 1999,
most people were dialing up to get their internet.
Webpages loaded super slow.
There was no mobile app ecosystem.
There was no iPhone.
- [Narrator] But some of the problems x.com faced in 1999
are still a problem today,
like the name.
- It's not clear exactly what the rights are
for X as a company going forward,
not just in the US but around the world
with various jurisdictions.
And it also, it's one of those things
it's not clear what the user's gonna think of it is.
Is this a dirty website or is this going to be
the world's greatest financial institution?
- [Narrator] And money is still an issue.
The site has struggled to win back advertising dollars
it lost during Musk's takeover
and it took on billions in debt during the sale,
plus attempts at a superapp haven't taken off in the US,
and regulators have voiced concerns
about social networks dabbling in finance,
like when Meta attempted a crypto payment system in 2019.
- The US has rules in place to protect consumers,
and there's a lot of hurdles and steps
that involved to become a bank
or to become a financial institution.
So that's one of the things
that Elon Musk will have to deal with
as he kind of expands what X is or what it wants to be.
- [Narrator] X didn't comment,
but people familiar with how Musk works
say not to count him out.
- This is me curling of 45. - Oh my gosh.
- While there are lots of really smart people out there
who say that being able to replicate a superapp
here in the US
is impossible or really hard to do,
you kind of get the idea
that he's looking to prove them wrong.
That he's going to be very excited to show what he can do.
Now if he's successful, that's still the question.
(dramatic music)