this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
111 points (88.3% liked)

Out of the loop

10994 readers
2 users here now

A community that helps people stay up to date with things going on.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Is Musk competing with Zuck for the worst branding ever?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] NoisyOne57 39 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Musk previously owned an online banking site known as x.com, which would later merge with PayPal, another service founded by Musk, which then became a separate entity with Musk no longer being involved it.

And when Musk was forced to complete the purchase of Twitter, he announced plans to make Twitter into a "Super app" like China's WeChat application, which can be used for payments.

Musk's hyperfocus on X might also be because when he was in his twenties, everything "cool" was having an X in it, like XForce and stuff like that.

He also wanted to create his X Corp company to have a single X as its name, but he couldn't do that because there was an Alphabet company already using that name.

[–] [email protected] 71 points 1 year ago

Musk didn't found PayPal. X.com merged with Confinity, another online financial site (founded by Peter Thiel and others). Confinity had already begun development of PayPal at that time. In the resulting company, still called X.com, there was a series of leadership conflicts, with Musk pushing out CEO Bill Harris to become CEO, before himself being replaced by Peter Thiel. It was under Thiel that the company changed it's name to PayPal, and later went public. By the time there was a company called "PayPal", Musk was not longer involved with daily operations.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

everything “cool” was having an X in it, like XForce and stuff like that.

Like that show Wormhole Xtreme

[–] wmrch 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm a simple man. I see Stargate reference I press little up arrow.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

"Hey, it's what I do"

[–] Plaid_Kaleidoscope 15 points 1 year ago

Peter thiel did PayPal.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA 6 points 1 year ago

It feels more 1990s Xtreme! wannabe than anything, but what would I know

[–] STUPIDVIPGUY 3 points 1 year ago

that doesn't make it less dumb