X, formerly known as Twitter, was founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams. It was released to the public on July 16th, 2006 and began to have 20,000 tweets per day. By 2007 the number of tweets per day had tripled to 60,000. Over the next few years X received more funding and became more popular, which culminated in it going public in 2013, with around 200 million active users per month. After 9 years of being a public company it was acquired by Elon Musk for 44 billion dollars.
Since his acquisition, Musk has been making changes to X in an attempt to push the company into profitability, such as removing the blue check marks for certified users to release X Premium, a monthly subscription service which gives users early access to select features and the ability to view and send more tweets, and removing a large portion of staff.
In an attempt to make a new source of revenue for X, Musk tested a live streaming feature on X by streaming his gameplay of Diablo IV, a popular online game created by Blizzard Entertainment, for 52 minutes on Oct. 2, 2023. The stream reached 2.8 million live viewers. However, X counts each “view” if the user watches the livestream for at least 2 seconds at 50% view, prompting some to claim that the figures are skewed. Musk also hints at competing in the streaming industry, with speculations that he could be planning to release a streaming platform.
Currently, the largest streaming platforms are Youtube Live, Kick and Twitch. In recent years, the community has grown due to its engaged participants and unique features such as exclusive contracts for creators.
Some users consider Musk’s plans for the company to be harmful in the long-term. Riley Ward (‘26) is an occasional X user and frequently watches live streams on Twitch. Ward explained his opinion that X wouldn’t be able to compete with established platforms. “I don’t believe so. Since Elon Musk’s takeover of the company [X has] lost lots of their ad sponsors which is primarily where [X] makes revenue. The already established [streaming] platforms have taken most of the users that would have come to [X],” said Ward.
Others see streaming as a viable way for X to increase its revenue. Adi Sachan (‘26), an avid user of X, thought that X had a reasonable chance to compete with its contenders. “I think X has a good chance of competing in the industry. It already has a large amount of users, now it just needs to get them to watch livestreams,” said Sachan.
As Musk continues to develop X’s streaming capabilities, users remain uncertain as to whether it will manage to compete with the already-established platforms in the streaming industry.
