Elon Musk-Led X Set To Challenge Twitch, Redefine What Livestreaming Can Be

After acquiring Twitter (now X) in 2022, Elon Musk has been sparing no effort to turn the microblogging site into an "everything app". Most of his decisions, including his plan to add dating app-like features to X in the future, have gained mixed reactions from users.

Undeterred by these knock-backs, the 52-year-old tech mogul is on a mission to radically overhaul the once-iconic social media platform.

In line with this, Musk has come up with aggressive monetisation plans for X that will position the company as a competitor to leading streaming platforms like Twitch, YouTube and Kick.

Transforming X into an "everything app"

The business magnate announced X will soon get traditional livestreaming features including monetisation through ad revenue, donations and clips.

As a test, Musk has been using an alternate X account to stream "Diablo 4" for quite some time now. During a recent broadcast, one of his viewers asked the X owner about the future of live streaming on the website.

Although YouTuber MrBeast recently turned down his offer to post videos on X claiming monetisation on the site, in its current state, is not up to the mark, Musk continues to encourage creators to use X as a video-sharing and content creation platform.

Twitter Blue subscribers can already monetise their posts, but their ad revenue depends on their reach. Now, Musk has confirmed that Twitch-like livestreaming features are headed to X. According to a report by Fortune, Musk will be giving streamers the full revenue for advertisements in broadcasts.

X's upcoming livestream monetisation strategy

"Any advertising that's in your replies, so if you were to post a stream, any advertising that's in the replies, you get all the previous... all the advertising revenue. So sometimes that can be quite a lot," Musk said.

Aside from this, Musk noted that X's team has been trying to get YouTube-like ads to play during videos on X for a while now. He went on to reveal that the team is also working hard to reduce streaming latency.

"We're just starting to add in video ads with a similar thing to YouTube where you can skip ahead after five seconds... And we also want to reduce the amount of latency with the streaming," Musk noted.

In October last year, over a million people tuned in to watch Musk's "Diablo 4" stream. Unsurprisingly, viewers compared X to websites like Amazon-owned Twitch and Google's online video-sharing platform YouTube.

A friend, who was playing with Musk on the January 5 stream, asked the Tesla chief about donations and tips, which are currently available on YouTube and Twitch.

Musk assured that the feature would "definitely" be coming in the future. He also teased subscription-type chats, which ensure only subscribers on certain tiers can access features for a monthly fee.

"You can choose how much, but it's like, I think one of the perks is like, you can even restrict the chat, or some of the chats, to be just subscribers. So then, you know, the advantage is that somebody subscribing then, they get to chat," Musk explained.