X (formerly Twitter) will soon launch an X TV App that will bring real-time content to smart TVs.
“This will be your go-to companion for a high-quality, immersive entertainment experience on a larger screen,” X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a Tuesday (April 23) post on the social media platform.
The app is still being built, but Yaccarino offered a preview of its features. It will include a trending video algorithm that will deliver tailored popular content, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered curation of topics that organize videos by subject, and enhanced video search that will find content more quickly, according to the post.
The X TV App will allow users to start watching content on a phone and then continue it on a TV, and it will provide simple casting that sends videos from mobile devices to smart TVs, per the post. The app will be available for most smart TVs.
The X News account showed a sample of content in a Tuesday post on the platform, adding, “Coming soon to a television near you: X TV.”
Coming soon to a television near you: X TV ? pic.twitter.com/C7VWNa7jG5
— News (@XNews) April 23, 2024
In a post reposted by Elon Musk, owner of X, the X Data account said that users watched 385 million hours — or 16 million days — worth of video on X in the last month.
In the last month, people on X have spent a lot of time watching video – to the tune of 385 million hours! That’s 1.4 trillion seconds, 23 billion minutes, or 16 million days worth of video.
Let’s watch what happens when you can stream the world in real-time on X TV! https://t.co/HxHDFOTRTY
— Data (@XData) April 23, 2024
“Let’s watch what happens when you can stream the world in real-time on X TV,” the post said.
Bloomberg reported Tuesday that X plans to monetize the app with different forms of partnerships that may include ads.
Musk aims to move X beyond a social media app, planning to make it an “everything app,” and has said the platform is targeting YouTube and LinkedIn.
It was reported in March that X was planning to debut a television app for smart TVs, aiming to push users to watch the social media platform’s longer videos on a larger screen, to create an app that looks like YouTube’s television app, and to compete with Twitch, Signal, Reddit and other services.
Musk said in a March 8 post on X: “We just want people to be able to watch long videos in comfort on their big screen TV.”