Techmeme: Amazon to Buy Video Site Twitch for More Than $1 Billion (Douglas MacMillan/Wall Street Journal)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News

August 25, 2014, 4:12 PM

Top News

Amazon.com:

Amazon acquiring Twitch for $970M in cash — Amazon.com to Acquire Twitch — Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Twitch Interactive, Inc., the leading live video platform for gamers. In July, more than 55 million unique visitors viewed …

More: twitch.tv, TechCrunch, Gigaom, PC World, Engadget, 9to5Google, The Next Web, Computerworld, WebProNews and Droid Life

Douglas MacMillan / Wall Street Journal:

Amazon to Buy Video Site Twitch for More Than $1 Billion — Amazon has agreed to acquire Twitch, a live-streaming service for videogame players, for more than $1 billion, according to a person who has been briefed on the matter.

Facebook:

Facebook will reduce “click-baiting” headlines and links shared in photo captions in News Feed — News Feed FYI: Click-baiting — Today we're announcing some improvements to News Feed to help people find the posts and links from publishers that are most interesting and relevant …

Li-Wei Lee / Google Drive Blog:

Google releases new Slides app for iOS, updates Sheets and Docs with offline and direct Office file editing — Your iPhone & iPad are ready to get to work with new apps for Docs, Sheets, & Slides — You suddenly remember you need to add “buy milk” to your grocery list, but don't have a pen or paper in sight.

More: MacRumors, Google Enterprise Blog, VentureBeat, The Verge, Macworld, TechCrunch, The Next Web, iMore, 9to5Google, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Ubergizmo, Gotta Be Mobile, Cult of Mac, iPhone in Canada Blog, iDownloadBlog.com, MacNN and WebProNews

Tweets: @googledrive and @benedictevans

Ryan Gallagher / The Intercept:

NSA providing records of 850B calls, locations, emails, and internet chats to 23 US agencies with a Google-like ICREACH search engine — The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google — The National Security Agency is secretly providing data to nearly …

More: The Hill. Tweets: @rj_gallagher, @eff, @dangillmor and @csoghoian

Harry McCracken / Fast Company:

TiVo Introduces A $50 Over-The-Air DVR For The Post-Aereo Era — In June, the U.S. Supreme Court killed the Aereo service—which used banks of tiny antennas and a cloud-based DVR to let people redirect over-the-air TV to all their Net-connected devices—by ruling that it violated Federal copyright law.

More: Gigaom, CNET, TechCrunch, Engadget, Wall Street Journal, Multichannel News, Bloomberg, CNN, Liliputing, SlashGear, TIME and Variety

Tweets: @davezatz and @robpegoraro

See also Mediagazer

Jonathan Vanian / Gigaom:

VMware plays nice with OpenStack, unveils a VMware-powered data-center-in-a-box — At this year's VMworld event, the virtualization giant plans to announce a new service that makes OpenStack more compatible with VMware tools and VMware-loaded data centers as well as a new appliance manufactured …

More: CITEworld, Fortune, eWeek, VentureBeat, Computerworld, The Register, Bloomberg, Forbes, OStatic blogs, Wall Street Journal and ZDNet

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

VMware Partners With Docker, Pivotal And Google To Bring Container Support To Its Platform

More: Google Cloud Platform Blog, Forbes and SiliconANGLE

Tim Peterson / AdAge:

Yahoo rolls out its native ad network to other publishers, including Vox Media's SB Nation — Here Is Yahoo's Native Ad Network — Content Recommendation Box on Vox Media, CBS Interactive Sites Includes Yahoo's Ads — Yahoo's content recommendation box places its native ads on others' sites.

More: SiliconBeat, Marketing Pilgrim, VentureBeat, WebProNews, Wall Street Journal and Business Insider

Kellex / Droid Life:

This is the New Motorola Skip, a Full-Blown Key Fob That Keeps Your Phone Unlocked When Near — Last year, along with the launch of the Moto X, Motorola introduced an accessory called the Skip (our review). The Skip was an attachable NFC clip that would allow you to skip the unlock PIN or pattern on your device with a simple touch.

More: 9to5Google, Gigaom, Gizmodo, The Verge, Android Police, Pocketnow, Ubergizmo and Android Central

Abhijeet M. / SamMobile:

EXCLUSIVE: Samsung working on circular Gear smartwatch, SIM-enabled Gear coming with Galaxy Note 4 — We've known for some time that Samsung is working on various new wearables, including a Gear smartwatch with cellular connectivity and the Gear VR, a virtual reality headset.

More: 9to5Google, Phandroid, GadgeTell, Gotta Be Mobile, Ubergizmo, SlashGear, Droid Life and Pocketnow

Craig Timberg / Washington Post:

Companies like Verint monitor cellular communications, offer governments surveillance systems that track callers without carriers' knowledge — For sale: Systems that can secretly track where cellphone users go around the globe — Makers of surveillance systems are offering governments across …

More: Engadget. Tweets: @manhack and @drudge_report. Thanks:@srikardr

Wall Street Journal:

Huawei CEO: Tizen has “no chance”, and we're putting new Windows Phone releases “on hold” — Huawei Is Shaking Up the Smartphone Market — Richard Yu, head of Chinese firm's consumer business group, talks about competing against Samsung and Apple.

More: Engadget, Gigaom, WMPoweruser, CNET, SlashGear, Electronista, TechSpot, DailyTech, Ubergizmo, MobileSyrup.com, Softpedia News and WinBeta

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

DraftKings Raises Another $41M And Acquires Daily Fantasy Sports Competitor StarStreet — Fantasy sports startup DraftKings has raised another $41 million in funding led by The Raine Group. The company is also announcing that it's acquired competitor StarStreet to capture an even larger portion of the daily fantasy sports market.

More: VentureBeat, Wall Street Journal, BetaBoston, Forbes, BetaBoston, Xconomy and Re/code

Reuters:

Sony says PlayStation network back online, user information safe after attack — (Reuters) - Sony Corp's (6758.T) PlayStation Network was back online on Monday following a cyber attack that took it down over the weekend, which coincided with a bomb scare on a commercial flight carrying a top Sony executive in the United States.

More: PlayStation.Blog, Fox News, BBC, USA Today and TIME

Sponsor Posts

Google:

Try Gemini 3 Pro — Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life

Shopify:

Shopify: Revolutionizing Commerce with Winter Edition '26 — Over 150+ new features transform how merchants build, design, and grow—with technology that amplifies creative vision.

Zoho:

The best time to become a Zoho Partner — The business world is not only changing but it is being rebuilt. Customers want connected ecosystems that will help them automate, unify their data, and do more with less.

IDrive:

Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:

OpenAI's 2026 Priority, Disney's AI Play, Datacenter Buildout Trouble

The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.

Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.

Hard Fork:

Australia Kicks Kids Off Social Media + Is the A.I. Water Issue Fake? + Hard Fork Wrapped

The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.

Subscribe to Hard Fork.

Access:

Why the next AI frontier is phone calls, with Beside CEO Maxime Germain

A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.

Subscribe to Access.

Great Chat:

So what happens after AGI?

A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.

Subscribe to Great Chat.

Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:

Ted Sarandos: Netflix and how tech changed storytelling

Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.

Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

Lachlan Cartwright Started in Tabloids. Now He's a Must-Read Media Gossip.

Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.

Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:12 PM ET, August 25, 2014.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.