Twitter tried to build a TV app a few years ago, but was met with a lukewarm response and ultimately abandoned the effort. Now, as it looks to revive its advertising business, it's doing so with a new Twitter X. The company announced a new TV app that will be available in “multiple app stores” as part of a broader effort to attract more advertisers, creators and partners around its “video-first platform.”
The company added that the video pivot will also include a new video tab on X itself. The tab has not yet launched.
Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino announced plans for a TV app in April of this year.
The X TV app beta is currently available in multiple app stores, with more platforms coming soon 📺
Combined with our upcoming video tab, this marks a major step in transforming X into a video-first platform, unlocking new opportunities for creators, advertisers and us. pic.twitter.com/1P72feD4Fd
— Engineering (@XEng) September 3, 2024
The new plans for more advertising come at a tough time for revenue, with X and its advertising business in dire straits.
With the company's revenue plummeting amid concerns about growing toxicity and declining user numbers, at least one major backer, Fidelity, is slashing its investment valuation by as much as 71.5%, valuing X at $12.5 billion by the end of 2023, compared with the $44 billion Elon Musk paid to buy the company and take it private.
Meanwhile, to fight back, X filed an antitrust lawsuit against the Advertising Association in August, alleging that its members had unfairly boycotted and not advertised on the platform. (The advertisers' group was dissolved days after the lawsuit was filed, but X appears to still be pursuing the case.)
Whether all this can be offset by the launch of a new video business remains to be seen.
From the screenshots, it appears that the TV app will feature videos from a variety of organizations, publishers, and creators, who may also be publishing these videos on their own apps or on YouTube, where a much larger audience is watching their content on TV screens.
This isn't the first time the social platform has dabbled in TV apps to drum up new activity. In 2016, when it was still Twitter, the company launched a set of TV apps to “let you watch live events, see what people are talking about, and keep up with what's going on.” The company shut down most of those apps just two years later as it looked to trim some of its lower-margin business. At the time, it wasn't clear how many users those apps had.
But increasing its video efforts remains a difficult, if potentially lucrative, goal for the company. Just before Musk took over the platform, Twitter added a TikTok-like full-screen feed. You can still tap on a video to switch to full-screen mode, then scroll down to keep watching new clips.
While vertical feeds and TV apps aren't exactly new trends, X's challenge will be to encourage creators to post original video content and, ultimately, make those creators and their content compelling enough to drive usage of the app.
Putting the cart before the horse has proven difficult: X launched an ad revenue-sharing program last year, but it's based on engagement and views (as many creator incentive programs are). When YouTube creator MrBeast posted a video that earned him $263,000 in ad revenue, he called the payout “a bit of a sham” because advertisers were buying ads on his videos and the numbers might be outliers.
My first X video made over $250,000! 😲
But that's just a facade. Advertisers noticed the attention it was getting and placed ads on my videos (I think), so my revenue per view is probably higher than you're experiencing. pic.twitter.com/nViVpZbWBb
— MrBeast (@MrBeast) January 22, 2024
The Wall Street Journal reported in March that even after Musk met with creators, there was some uncertainty about the platform's long-term plans to support the creator economy.
Musk has experimented with different video experiences, including allowing video streaming in Spaces, enabling video calling with other users and testing video conferencing tools, but the company hasn't yet reached a significant monetization opportunity for any of those tools.