X (formerly Twitter) will soon have the right to its own TV application, to display long videos directly on television. A way for the platform to compete with YouTube but also to attract advertisers.
Since he bought Twitter, since renamed X, Elon Musk has had difficulty attracting, and even keeping, advertisers. Between repeated controversies, questionable moderation rules, the spread of fake news and a boss who is a real weather vane, using the platform is not without danger for companies. Also, the social network has developed a plan, which it unveiled last month, aimed at allowing advertisers to present video advertisements alongside selected content creators, in order to reach a younger audience, and therefore to generate more advertising revenue. Things are clearly starting to fall into place, since Elon Musk announced on March 9 that an application would soon be launched so that users can watch long videos on connected televisions (smart TVs). According to the American magazine Fortuneit will be available on Amazon and Samsung TVs later this week.
With this application, the billionaire intends to compete directly with YouTube, by encouraging users to watch “long videos on a bigger screen” to make Twitter more attractive to online influencers and advertisers. The application should closely resemble that of YouTube. But the Google platform is not the billionaire’s only target, Twitch and Reddit would also be in his crosshairs.
X on TV: an application to compete with YouTube
The app’s launch comes after the company announced that the social network was now “a video-focused platform” in a blog post in January. “A growing number of users are actively watching and posting videos on X”she indicated, adding that “video is part of more than eight out of ten user sessions”. In December 2023 alone, Internet users would have watched the equivalent of 130 years of videos of 30 minutes or more.
To attract the public, on the platform. MrBeast, a famous YouTuber with 243 million subscribers, published one of his videos last January, after having broadcast it on YouTube a few months earlier. A revenue sharing system will be put in place with content creators, like that of YouTube.
The diversification that the billionaire seems to be making with deliveries and transport… –, a bit like WeChat. The addition of AI should also be one of the next steps (see our article).