Under the innovative leadership of Elon Musk, social communication platform X is poised to introduce pioneering features aimed at elevating its user engagement by venturing into game streaming and live shopping, thereby steering the platform towards becoming an all-encompassing application, as per recent reports. The ambitious endeavor which saw Musk revealing these features during a 54-minute broadcast of Diablo IV from an anonymized account (@cyb3rgam3r420) on X seeks to strategically position X as a “one-stop-shop” application, seamlessly bridging various digital realms.
The disclosed features align with similar functionalities found on platforms like Twitch and are currently accessible to X Premium subscribers, fostering a virtual space where gaming intersects with social interaction. The revelation was subsequently affirmed by Musk, illustrating the company’s on-going commitment to exploring and adopting avant-garde digital advancements.
An engineer from X, Mark Kalman, contributed to the discourse, sharing a video that explicates how Premium subscribers can configure game streaming from their accounts by interfacing Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) with their Twitter accounts via X Media Studio, according to a report by Engadget.
At this juncture, the clarity of X’s earnestness in targeting live streamers is still enshrouded with some ambiguity. The present iteration of this feature sustains viewer comments during broadcasts, albeit currently lacking several creator-centric features omnipresent in other platforms. This venture exemplifies one of the latest maneuvers by X in pivoting towards creators and novel video features, in an endeavor to magnetize additional users to its platform.
Concurrently, the company declared the forthcoming experimental phase of live shopping features, propelled by a newfound partnership with Paris Hilton. Reports from Variety allude to Hilton signing an agreement to “produce four original video content programs annually that incorporate live shopping features.”
However, one looming question remains: Is the infrastructure of X adept to sustain the demands of the new live video features? The company has previously grappled with difficulties pertaining to streaming large audio and video broadcasts, especially those amplified by Musk’s account. The conspicuous disruption during a broadcast featuring Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Musk in May, meant to announce DeSantis’s presidential candidacy, underlines these challenges.
According to Musk’s biographer, Walter Isaacson, the difficulty was attributed to stability issues arising from a poorly planned move of one of the company’s data centers. Nevertheless, it seems apparent that the issues may not have been completely resolved, auguring the need for enhanced structural fortifications to ensure the stable rollout of these ambitious features.
