There’s a bit of an unwritten rule in social media circles – the longer a platform exists, the probability of it incorporating live streaming increases. It happened to Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and even LinkedIn. X, (formerly Twitter)’s outspoken owner Elon Musk is eyeing streaming tech for the struggling platform.
An App that Does Everything
Twitter has gone through a metamorphosis of late, becoming X.com in July 2023 and ditching its famous bird logo. The change met with a mixed reaction, especially from a media that had already witnessed the social network shed users. The eMarketer website predicted, in 2022, that Twitter could lose up to 32m subscribers within two years.
This means something has to change – or, in most cases, something new needs adding. As mentioned, all the original social media sites introduced live-streaming to compete with young upstarts, as well as short video formats like Reels, Shorts, and Twitter’s previous effort, Vine.
Back in October of last year, Musk began a test of the “X video streamer”. It’s part of the billionaire’s plan to turn Twitter into an app that does everything, something Musk has been trying to do with the X brand since 1999.
X.com was a bank before PayPal and, later, Twitter came along. Musk was voted off the project just over a year after its launch. That move seems to have lived rent-free in the South African’s mind ever since, bringing us right back to Twitter’s “everything” plan.
Twitter hasn’t had much luck with video streaming to date or, indeed, any major expansion. In March 2015, the short message platform acquired Periscope, a video streaming app, that would last five years before Twitter pulled the plug, in 2020.
Periscope still exists on present-day Twitter, with an intact Help section and a brief test of its live streaming capabilities by Musk in May 2023. This likely forms the core of the X video streamer.
An Hour-long Stream
From tourism to entertainment, there’s barely an industry out there that hasn’t incorporated the technology in some way or another. Sports people and actors stream themselves on social networks all the time, while news outlets like the BBC host live sessions on Facebook.
Gaming is streaming’s best friend. Remarkably, even the traditionally analog parts of the industry, like casino gaming, have begun a shift toward modern ways of playing, especially for table games.
According to the Playstar website, which offers table games online, this type of entertainment includes things like roulette, blackjack, and baccarat. Playstar’s live-streamed versions mean that players get an authentic casino experience with a real, human dealer. Cards are dealt by hand, rather than by a computer.