X.com is a complex entity with two distinct historical phases that are often conflated. Originally, X.com was an online bank founded by Elon Musk in 1999, which later merged with Confinity to form PayPal. In a separate development, the social media platform Twitter was founded in 2006 as a microblogging service. In 2022, Elon Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion and rebranded it to X in 2023, aiming to transform it into an 'everything app' encompassing payments, commerce, and comprehensive communication tools. The current X.com platform serves as an American social media service where users can post short messages (up to 280 characters), images, videos, and other media. It features direct messaging, video/audio calling, bookmarks, lists, communities, integration with the Grok AI chatbot, job search functionalities, and social audio Spaces. Headquartered in San Francisco under X Corp. (a subsidiary of Musk's xAI), X has hundreds of millions of active users and is renowned for real-time information sharing and public discourse. The platform has faced significant controversies including content moderation issues, misinformation spread, massive workforce reductions post-acquisition, and legal battles over free speech and data privacy. Financially, X has struggled with declining ad revenue, prompting Musk to seek alternative revenue streams like premium subscriptions and potential payment system integration—echoing the original X.com online banking concept he founded in 1999.