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

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August 25, 2014, 4:12 PM

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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

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