‘X is Becoming a Video First Platform’, Says CEO Linda Yaccarino

X (formerly known as Twitter) has revealed its overall year-on-year growth numbers for video consumption and time spent watching videos, claiming that the social media platform is showing strong video-centric content consumption behaviour. The company CEO Linda Yaccarino also acknowledged the platform’s rise in the video domain. Notably, X owner Elon Musk has emphasised the importance of becoming video-first and released several new video-centric features ever since he took over the company. Last month, X introduced audio and video calling features for all users.

The information was shared by X Data, the official data-sharing account of the platform. As per the post, the social media giant has grown by 35 percent year-on-year in terms of video views. This indicates that the overall views of videos on the platform have grown more than one-third since the previous financial year. In addition, the post also added that the total time spent on videos has increased by 17 percent year-on-year.

Further, the account claimed that four out of every five user sessions now include watching at least one video. CEO Yaccarino reshared the post and said, “X is becoming a video first platform”. The growth in video consumption comes on the back of Musk’s ambitions to create a video-centric platform. Ever since he took control of the social media giant, the platform has released multiple video features for users.

In May 2023, Musk announced that X Premium subscribers would be able to upload two-hour-long videos, allowing premium users to add videos as large as 8GB. In August, the social media platform rolled out support for live videos, matching its capabilities with rivals such as Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. The same month, Musk allowed verified users to download videos if the content creator enabled the option. Other than that, the billionaire has also worked on improving the video recommendation algorithm and added an infinite scroll feature when watching videos on the Android or iOS app.

However, videos are not the only area where the platform is adding new features. According to a report, the company’s developers are working on bringing passkey support to the Android app, after introducing it to the iOS app earlier this year. This will allow users to circumvent the limitations with passwords and rely on biometric logins and similar methods to keep their accounts secure.