THE NEWS WRAP: Amazon acquires game streaming platform Twitch for $970 million – StartupSmart

Amazon, not Google as was earlier reported, is purchasing game streaming company Twitch.

 

The e-commerce giant made the announcement on its blog yesterday, confirming it has reached an agreement to acquire Twitch for $970 million in cash.

 

Twitch is the leading live video platform for gamers. In July it had more than 55 million unique visitors who viewed more than 15 billion minutes of content on Twitch, produced by more than one million broadcasters.

 

Amazon chief executive officer Jeff Bezos says the company is looking forward to helping Twitch build more services for the gaming community.

 

“Broadcasting and watching gameplay is a global phenomenon and Twitch has built a platform that brings together tens of millions of people who watch billions of minutes of games each month – from The International, to breaking the world record for Mario, to gaming conferences like E3. And amazingly, Twitch is only three years old,” he says.

 

The acquisition is expected to close, subject to customary closing conditions, in the second half of 2014.

 

Facebook takes on click bait

 

In an effort to weed out stories that its users say they don’t want to see, Facebook is set to introduce two updates, the first that will reduce click-baiting headlines, and the second to help people see links shared on Facebook in the best format.

 

Facebook will start taking into account the amount of time people spend away from Facebook after clicking a link when ranking stories with links in them. In addition it will prioritise links that are shown in Facebook’s link format, as opposed to buried within captions or in status updates.

 

PlayStation Network back online

 

Sony’s PlayStation Network is back online following a cyber-attack that took it down over the weekend, which coincided with a bomb scare on a flight carrying a top Sony executive in the United States.

 

Sony says on its PlayStation blog that PSN had been taken down by a denial of service-style attack which overwhelmed the system, but did not access any of its users information.

 

Overnight

 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 75.65 to 17,076.87. The Australian dollar is currently trading at US93 cents.