Elon Musk is pursuing new video features, including game streaming and live shopping, as part of his attempt to turn X into an “everything app.” The company formerly known as Twitter is experimenting with basic game streaming capabilities similar to Twitch, which X Premium subscribers can currently access.
Musk showed off the feature Sunday night at a Diablo IV broadcast posted from an anonymous Twitter account with the handle @cyb3rgam3r420. Musk later responded to the account and confirmed that the company was testing the feature. An X engineer, Mark Kalman, also shared explaining how Premium subscribers can set up game streaming from their accounts by connecting Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) to their Twitter account through X Media Studio.
For now, it’s unclear how serious X is about courting streamers. The feature appears to support viewer comments on streams, but for now it lacks most of the creator-focused features of other platforms. But it’s one of the latest examples of how X is turning to creators and new video features in an effort to attract more users to the platform. Separately, the company also said it would begin experimenting with live shopping features through a new partnership. . Variety that Hilton has committed to “creating four original video content programs per year that include live shopping features.”
It’s also unclear whether the X infrastructure will be able to keep up with the new live video features. The company, which laid off many of its site reliability engineers last year, has had problems with large live audio and video streams, particularly those powered by Musk’s account. When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appeared in a Spaces chat in May to announce a presidential run with Musk, the current.
According to Musk biographer Walter Isaacson, the problem was due to a poorly planned move of one of the company’s data centers. However, the problems still do not seem to be completely resolved. Last week, Musk attempted to livestream himself visiting the U.S.-Mexico border when the video feed was abruptly cut off after about . Musk was eventually able to restart the stream, but only after sending a frantic company-wide email to the entire X staff, according to New York Times reporter . “Please fix this,” she said.
