Elon Musk-owned social media giant X (formerly Twitter) is now allowing users to make video and phone calls on the platform without having to enter their number and buy an X Premium subscription. The feature, which was previously only available to X Premium users, has now been rolled out to all users and is expected to provide stiff competition to rivals from other companies such as Meta’s WhatsApp.
An X engineer named Enrique Barragan revealed the news on the social media platform, writing:”we’re slowly rolling out audio and video calling to non premium users, try it out! now you can also choose allow calls from everyone,”
However, users will only be able to receive calls from accounts they follow or have in their address book. The two accounts must also have interacted via DM at least once in order to connect via a call. However, users can tinker with the settings to change who they receive calls from just the people they follow to anyone on the platform.
Notably, X had previously rolled out this feature only to iOS users last year, and only to those who had a valid X Premium subscription. Earlier this year, the Elon Musk-led company decided to offer the calling feature on its Android application as well, but it was still restricted to Premium subscribers.
How to make calls on X?
1) Open the X app on your Android or iOS smartphone and navigate to the DM section.
2) Click on the phone icon and select ‘Audio Call’ or ‘Video Call’ to start a conversation. The recipient will then receive a notification that you are trying to call them.
3) Users can also change who can call them by navigating to the Settings option in the top right corner