Elon Musk's X has already declared that it aims to compete with LinkedIn in job listings and PayPal in payments, and now the company wants to take on the likes of Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams in video conferencing tools.
One of X's employees, Chris Parkposted last week that the company had held its first internal meeting using the tool, and Park claims that initial feedback from the team has been good, and the company will likely work on improving the ability to pin speakers and notifications showing who's joining or leaving.
X owner Elon Musk responded to the post with a fire emoji, the closest thing to an official confirmation that X has gotten now that under Musk's leadership, X has stopped responding to press inquiries.
My first conference meeting with my amazing friends @X and Translator Teammate.
It's already a strong alternative to Google Hangouts, Zoom, AWS Chime, and of course Microsoft Teams 🤠
The minimum feedback you will likely get is:
– Get clearer visibility and notifications when someone is… pic.twitter.com/FJ252w6m4C
— Chris Park (@chrisparkX) August 23, 2024
App Researcher, A.K.A. P4mui The platform showed that, like other online conferencing tools, users can instantly create new meetings or schedule them for later directly from the iOS app.
Another app researcher Nima Oujinoted that the conferencing feature could allow hosts to set a unique code for each meeting that participants can enter when joining.
Like many feature teasers for the Musk-owned platform, the conference feature doesn't yet have a definitive release date or rollout plan.
It's worth noting that X already enables live video streaming through its Spaces product — tools like Zoom and Google Meet allow users to switch between video conferencing and seminar-style streaming — so it wouldn't be surprising to see X integrating both products.
It's also worth keeping a close eye on how platforms roll out the feature: when X launched its calling feature earlier this year, the social network enabled it for all users by default, and there were also privacy concerns, including no IP address masking protection by default.
Before X rolls out meetings capabilities to all users, it needs to take a closer look at privacy and security controls.