Elon Musk Announces Dedicated Twitter Video App
The announcement was made in response to a tweet from a user with an account name S-M Robinson on a 97-minute-long interview of Musk with the British rapper Zuby, suggesting that “We really need a Twitter video app for Smart TVs. I’m not watching an hour-long video on Twitter.” To which Musk replied, “It’s coming,” without providing any further information on the unannounced app, such as when the app will launch or what features it will have. The Twitter user responded to the above tweet by Musk by saying, “Appreciate it. I can see a day when I can cancel my subscription to YouTube and never look at it again.”
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 17, 2023
Twitter’s Focus On Growing Video Content
The announcement of the video app for Smart TVs comes two days after Musk and Twitter’s newly appointed CEO, Linda Yaccarino, in an investor presentation last Thursday, revealed that the company plans to prioritize growing video content on the platform, reported Reuters, citing a presentation it had reviewed. The company aims to revive its social media business through video, creator, and commerce partnerships to explore more ways to make money outside of digital advertising. The vertical video accounts for over 10 percent of the time spent on the platform. Further, Musk and Yaccarino reportedly told investors during a private call that the company is in “early conversations with political and entertainment figures, payments services and news and media publishers on potential partnerships”, reported the publication citing an anonymous source familiar with the matter. Recently, Twitter has made many changes to improve the user experience for watching and sharing videos and provide competition to other streaming services, like the popular YouTube. For instance, last month, Twitter introduced an update to its paid subscription plan that allows its verified members to upload videos of up to 2 hours in length on the platform with an increased file size limit. Also, earlier this month, Musk said Twitter would soon start paying creators for ads served in their replies with a payment block of USD five million. For this, the creator needs to be verified, and only ads served to verified users count. It remains to be seen whether Twitter’s upcoming video streaming app for Smart TVs will be available to all users or would it be limited only to paid Twitter Blue subscribers.
