X, formerly Twitter, is to get video calling as part of ongoing efforts to turn the platform into a so-called “everything app” offering a broad range of services.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino announced the news during an interview with CNBC on Thursday.
“Soon you’ll be able to make video chat calls without having to give your phone number to anyone on the platform,” Yaccarino told CNBC’s Sara Eisen.
With pretty much every social media platform already offering video calls, it makes sense for X to finally join the party. But whether people take to the feature remains to be seen.
X has been experiencing great turbulence after Musk acquired the platform for $44 billion in October, and Yaccarino was hired in June to steady the ship. But that’s not all, as the former NBCUniversal executive has also been tasked with transforming X into an everything app, something Musk has long talked about.
The transition began in earnest last month when the company changed its name from Twitter to X.
“The rebrand represented really a liberation from Twitter,” Yaccarino said. “A liberation that allowed us to evolve past a legacy mindset and thinking. And to reimagine how everyone, how everyone on Spaces who’s listening, everybody who’s watching around the world. It’s going to change how we congregate, how we entertain, how we transact all in one platform.”
Introducing video calls is a small part of what’s coming, with other features set to include, for example, the ability to make payments between users, friends, and creators on the platform.
X has also started to allow users to monetize their shared content, while other features could conceivably include things like online shopping and banking, with the overall aim to simplify common tasks by offering them within a single platform.
But not everyone is happy about such apps. Privacy campaigners, for example, have concerns about a single platform holding so much data about individual users, which could result in greater exposure in the event of a security breach.
China’s WeChat, for example, has made a success of the everyday app. Yaccarino is hoping she can do the same for X.
Instagram is testing a new format for long-form videos called Features. It allows select creators to upload horizontal videos running up to 90 minutes long. Instagram has already tested the new format with creators in Brazil, and now, it's expanding to tens of thousands of creators across the US.
How will Instagram's new Features format work?
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
I have lost count of how many times I have gone to bed thinking I will finally sleep on time, only to somehow end up scrolling Instagram or X again. A few minutes turn into an hour, then another, and before I notice, it is 2 or 3 a.m. The next morning, I am usually annoyed with myself because I could have just slept and felt considerably better for the day ahead.
It is also a surprisingly hard habit to beat. Knowing you should put the phone down does not always help once it is already in your hand. Brick Night is a new gadget built around that exact problem. Instead of relying on you to remember to turn on an app blocker, it automatically restricts selected apps and websites when your phone enters your chosen sleep space during the hours you set.