On a recent Friday in February, Elon Musk, the billionaire behind Tesla and owner of X (previously known as Twitter), declared his plan to abandon his phone number in favor of exclusively using the social media platform X for text, audio, and video communications.
This move is seen as Musk’s effort to promote the enhanced communication features of X. The introduction of audio and video calling capabilities to the platform took place in October of the previous year.
Musk has since been a vocal proponent of transforming X into a comprehensive “everything app.”
Musk shared on his X profile, “In a few months, my phone number will be deactivated, and I’ll switch to using X exclusively for messaging and audio/video calls.”
In a few months, I will discontinue my phone number and only use X for texts and audio/video calls
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 9, 2024
It’s worth noting that the platform unveiled its audio and video calling features in an early version last year, initially available to a select user base. The capability for direct audio and video calls within the app was broadened to include Android users just a month ago.
In mid-January, the company began deploying call functionality updates, which were made accessible to Android phone users.
A significant highlight is the zero-cost nature of audio and video call support on X for all users who have installed the latest version of the app, eliminating the need for an X premium membership to utilize these call features.
Following the rollout for iOS users in October 2023, Android users received access to this feature the subsequent month.
The functionality mirrors that on iOS, where making calls requires an X Premium subscription, but receiving calls is available to all users, regardless of subscription status.
Following the acquisition of the platform, Musk unveiled his vision to morph “Twitter” into a universal “everything app,” supporting posts up to 25,000 characters.
With the rebranding of Twitter to X, Musk also rechristened the content aggregation tool TweetDeck to XPro.
He announced this change on July 28, mentioning, “Name is changing to XPro. Will come with a wide range of psy-op plugins,” through a post on the platform.
