There you have it: Twitter is officially bowing out. The historical address, twitter.com, now automatically redirects to x.com. The end of a transition which took place in three acts.
Twitter, 2006-2024. If you visit the social network by typing www.twitter.com in the browser address bar, you will now come across x.com. A mandatory redirection is now required for Internet users going to Elon Musk’s community site. Moreover, the person tweeted on May 17: “ all core systems are now on x.com. »
Once the redirection is done, Internet users will see two banners at the bottom of their screen. The first confirms the URL change, but that the ” Privacy and data protection settings remain unchanged. » The second asks the user’s preference regarding cookies — accept all of them or just some.
Elon Musk is known for having a mania for the letter X. We find it in some of his companies (SpaceX, xAI), in specific products (the Tesla Model now used for late Twitter). The renaming of the site follows this trend, as does the attempt to give the name X Æ A-12 to one of its children.
A transition in three acts
The takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk, which occurred in October 2022 after a long series full of twists and turns, was the first act of this transition. The second act arrived in July 2023, with the announcement of the upcoming end of Twitter, for the benefit of
Until now, the markers of this transition have been cosmetic and symbolic, above all. A new brand identity, new products and services with explicit titles (X Premium, ex Twitter Blue) or even an attempt to establish a new vocabulary (which has not yet taken hold): , For example.
Before this third act, which occurred on May 17, a first attempt took place earlier this spring to switch from twitter.com to x.com on a more technical level. However, there were problems along the way, as reported for example by Ars Technica or KrebsOnSecurity in April 2024.
“ Elon Musk’s Company X botched its attempt to replace twitter.com links with x.com », wrote the first. “ Twitter’s clumsy move to X.com is a gift for phishers », confirmed the second. To put it briefly, the system was instructed to interpret the character string “twitter.com” as “x.com”.
However, this shift has inspired the phishing sector to create tailor-made traps.
Addresses like roblotwitter.com, fedetwitter.com, spacetwitter.com, netflitwitter.com or firefotwitter.com have been set up to generate, on the Internet user side, addresses displaying roblox.com, fedex.com, spacex.com, netflix .com or firefox.com. Fortunately, the error was fixed, but there was some flutter for 48 hours.
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