Elon Musk has been releasing many updates for X (formerly Twitter) ever since his acquisition. Some of them were welcome changes while others have been criticized even today. In an attempt to cover all media bases, the tech billionaire will be releasing a YouTube-like app as well.
X's Dedicated Video App
One of the things that Elon Musk changed about the app is the time limit of videos, allowing users to upload one that's longer than two hours, provided that they are Premium subscribers. Now, Musk is doubling down by planning to create a video app for long-form videos.
The upcoming X app will serve as a streaming service where users will be able to watch long videos like they would on YouTube and other streaming services, and they will be available on Samsung and Amazon smart TVs as well.
The feature was first announced by DogeDesigner on X, which was confirmed by the X owner by quoting the post saying: "Coming soon." The app's announcement follows Musk's recent announcement about the platform.
You can soon watch your favorite 𝕏 long form videos directly on your SmartTVs. pic.twitter.com/MlXpjPN9ed
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) March 9, 2024
As reported by Engadget, the tech billionaire said that X would be a "video-first" site moving forward, with the claim that eight out of ten people who use the platform are watching videos. This just shows how what was once Twitter is slowly straying away from what made it popular.
One of the selling points of the platform was that it was a microblogging app, meaning that people could read short texts from various users sharing their thoughts and updates. While that is still the norm, the X owner seems to be pushing the app in a different direction.
This could also just be part of Musk's plans to make X an "everything app," which people can use for different functions, not just microblogging, or another way to lure in users as the app's usage has dropped by 30% compared to 2023.
Musk continues to add more features that could potentially earn the social media company revenue, especially since it doesn't have the best track record when it comes to keeping advertisers. With ad sales being its main source of revenue, that does not bode well for the site.
More Changes in the Future
It's probably safe to say that the X owner will spring more changes to users in the future, which has been an ongoing theme for the social media platform. Just recently, Musk also announced that X will soon remove engagement counts.
That means that the usual numbers that show how many likes, reposts, or replies will soon disappear. According to Gizmodo, the reason behind the arguably impractical change was to make the timeline look "cleaner."
To engage with posts, users will have to swipe left and right instead, with left swipes for liking the post and right swipes for replying. Predictably, users aren't exactly happy about the change since they have already been used to the current format.
This is a similar situation to what Musk pulled previously by removing news headlines when posting a link, also stating that removing them would make a cleaner-looking timeline. That did not last very long and the headlines were brought back.
