• by Colin Kirkland , April 11, 2023

“Twitter no longer exists,” according to an April 4 court filing that surfaced on Tuesday. Under the ownership of Twitter CEO Elon Musk, the microblogging platform has been merged into Musk’s corporate entity, X Corp.

The merger was first revealed in documents in a court case between Twitter and former congressional candidate Laura Loomer. Loomer sued the platform, claiming that it violated federal racketeering laws when it banned her account four years ago. 

Musk posted a tweet in October that read: “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.” 

In addition, Musk already possesses the “X.com” URL -- an online bank he founded in 1999 that merged with another company to become PayPal. 

Because of Musk’s history with digital payments, and his desire to create a “super app” that combines messaging, social networking, and payment features reminiscent of China’s massively popular WeChat app, this could be the billionaire’s first move in a larger pursuit. 

“Regardless, we can be certain that Twitter's functionality, user base, and mass amounts of data would play a crucial role in making this mega-app a reality faster than if Musk had started from scratch,” wrote Forbes, which raised potential privacy concerns, citing research from Duke University that identified more than 57% of Twitter’s service providers as data brokers.

Twitter's status as a social media platform is not, at least for now, affected by the corporate moniker change.