Elon Musk, a valuable platform today, sees Twitter as a ‘waste of time’

Loved by many and hated by others, Twitter (currently X) is still a favorite among users, but Elon Musk hasn’t always loved the social network. In fact, the billionaire’s first impression of the platform was that it was a “waste of time” when he saw his first wife Justine Musk using the instant messaging space when it was first launched.

The story is told by New York Times journalists Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, who wrote the book Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter. The authors say that Justine tried to convince Elon to create an account, but the Tesla creator wasn’t too happy with the idea because he thought the social network was a waste of time.

After much insistence, the billionaire created his account in 2010, but started using the social network actively only in 2011. In December of that year, the businessman tweeted, “I wasn’t sure I could handle messages up to 140 characters.”

Musk and X

Much has changed in the life of Elon Musk and Twitter, which found a strange way to coexist from the end of 2011 to the beginning of 2024. The blue bird platform was bought by the billionaire in 2022 and reformulated as X after a while.

Yes, this is really me, as my mother @mayemusk will testify.
I’m not sure I can handle doing homework in just 140 characters. It’ll lead to longer thoughts on G+

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 21, 2011

In a love-hate relationship, Musk has spurred sweeping changes to the social network’s policies, including a new format that only allows subscribers to get the famous verification badge, and a chatbot called Grok, which has no moral filters, has been launched amid the AI ​​firestorm.

The most notable of these were the mass layoffs carried out by Elon Musk. Recently, due to a political dispute with Brazilian authorities, the owner of X fired the platform’s entire Brazilian office.