Elon Musk has taken to the X tonight to test out their latest live-streaming implementation. In the short, 53-second clip, we see Musk laughing, having a good time with what we presume is part of the development team at X.
Musk uses the opportunity to lift some weights (a 45 pound/20kg dumbell), which seemed trivial, likely much smaller than the weights used during his training to fight Zuckerberg.
The video quality was decent, although blurry at times, when the phone stopped moving the quality was pretty good. Musk commented that it looks like the live streaming is working well, better than the 8-bit quality they had before, a reference to the blocky, low-quality live streams in the past.
There’s support for comments and likes, but no mention of quality settings for live streaming. Earlier today, X added support to participate in live audio Spaces from the desktop, which would also be key to getting widespread adoption for video streaming. Many of us leverage software like OBS to share the screen and discuss content online.
Live streaming was a popular feature on Twitter in the past after the company acquired the live streaming app Periscope in 2015. Periscope allowed users to broadcast live video from their smartphones, and Twitter quickly integrated the app into its own platform.
The early days of live streaming on Twitter were marked by a number of challenges. The Periscope app was not initially very user-friendly, and the quality of live broadcasts was often poor. Additionally, Twitter’s infrastructure was not initially designed to handle the large volume of traffic that live streaming generates.
Despite these challenges, live streaming on Twitter quickly gained popularity. In 2015, Periscope was downloaded over 10 million times in its first month on the market. And in 2016, Twitter live streams were watched by over 1 billion people.
In the years since Twitter really hasn’t focused on streaming, but it is possible, currently an iOS exclusive.
DogeDesigner helped remind the community that Live Streaming exists and given it’s buried in the new new post > Camera > Live Stream, X needed help.
