- Here is an audio (MP3) version of this snippet, and archived snippets are here.
- YouTube Takes On Amazon With New Gaming App: Google announced the release this summer of YouTube Gaming, a mobile application and website that will focus on video game videos and live streams. In a blog post, the company said YouTube Games would have individual pages for some 25,000 games as well as pages for particular publishers and gaming celebrities. This arena has become increasingly competitive. There is Twitch, the site where gamers watch each other play live, which Amazon bought for about $1 billion last year. And Twitch is facing competition from sites like MLG.TV, which has poached former Twitch stars like the Call of Duty phenom Matthew “Nadeshot” Haag. YouTube Gaming is the latest example of the website’s efforts to better serve a specific demographic of its customer base, with the goal of encouraging advertisers to spend more money. YouTube has also created an app specifically for kids who watch videos. YouTube is stepping up investments in new services to attract viewers and ad dollars to compete with Amazon, Facebook, Hulu and Spotify. In February, YouTube released YouTube Kids, which can be downloaded onto phones or tablets and includes special parental controls and programs such as Thomas the Tank Engine, Mother Goose Club and Reading Rainbow. It is also testing a stand-alone music service called YouTube Music Key.
- Nielsen Study: The average American used apps for 37.5 hours last quarter -- nearly a full work-week. Nielsen on Thursday released a new study showing that while the number of apps that smartphone-wielding Americans use holds steady at around 26.7 per month, we're spending more time with them overall. The average American used apps for 37 hours and 28 minutes last quarter -- nearly a full work-week. And that's up from 30 hours and 15 minutes just the quarter before and a 63 percent rise over two years, the company said in a blog post. Nielsen dug into its data and found that entertainment apps such as games, music and video seem to be the main culprits of the increase. Overall, smartphone users reported a 26 percent increase in the time they spend using their smartphones for the fun things in life, for an average of 13 hours and 20 minutes per month. Entertainment app users gained 13 million additional users over the past year. And, as a group, they spent nearly three hours more in apps than they did last year. Gaming, meanwhile, was the fastest-growing app category within entertainment. More than three-quarters of entertainment app users reported playing at least one game in the last quarter of 2014. Smartphone owners spend a little more than 10 hours playing games, which can get awfully addictive.Men use more apps than women -- 27.2, on average, versus 26.3 -- but women tend to spend about an hour more using apps overall each month.
- Alibaba Plans to Create TBO, China’s Version of Netflix, HBO: Alibaba is planning to build China’s version of Netflix and HBO via a new service called Tmall Box Office, as it tries to service 600 million families craving more entertainment content. Tmall Box Office will be offered in about two months through Alibaba's set-top box and smart televisions that carry its operating system, including those manufactured by Haier Group. Some of the content will be produced by the company and some purchased overseas. Alibaba is on a buying spree as it tries to compete with Tencent Holdings for China’s $5.9 billion online video market. Alibaba Pictures Group Ltd. completed a $1.57 billion stake sale in Hong Kong to help finance potential acquisitions in June. Billionaire Chairman Jack Ma visited Hollywood in October to acquire more content. “We want to create a whole new family entertainment experience,” Liu said. “Our goal is to become like Netflix in the U.S, HBO in the U.S.” It was not clear how the service would fit with Youku Tudou, one of China's biggest video streaming platforms in which Alibaba bought a 16.5 percent stake last year. However, unlike the majority of domestic rivals, about 90 percent of TBO's content will be paid for, either by monthly subscription or on a show-by-show basis, Liu said. The remaining 10 percent would be free. Netflix itself is also considering an entry into China, a notoriously difficult task for foreign Internet companies.
- Reliance readies for an e-Commerce push - talks of B2B marketplace and mobile payments at AGM. Mukesh Ambani said Reliance Retail’s fashion and lifestyle format will roll out its e-commerce property before the end of this year. Reliance Jio, the wireless telephony and data services unit of RIL, is set to launch 4G services by December this year. RIL will also use Reliance Jio’s internet infrastructure to roll out an e-commerce marketplace platform, group chairman Ambani said at the company’s 41st annual general meeting on Friday. Here’s a peek at upcoming JIO services: Jio Money – Digital payments and money transfer services including a digital wallet. Switch-and-Walk – an app that allows customers to seamlessly change phones. Jio Drive – a cloud app for storing, sync-ing and sharing content between devices and with friends. Jio Play – An HD TV service with hundreds of channels. Jio Beats – a digital music streaming service, that also allows download and offline listening. Jio Mags - a collection of popular magazines. Jio News – news from leading news publishing houses across multiple languages and categories.
- Facebook will tweak your news feed based on how long you look at stuff: Facebook is tweaking its algorithms to account for a new metric: the amount of time you spend looking at things in your feed, regardless of whether or not you actively interact with it. Scroll past something without stopping for long, and Facebook’s algorithms will slowly learn that you don’t particularly care for that sort of content. Camp out on a post for a bit, though, and Facebook starts the timer behind the scenes. If you spend more time on this story than you spend on most things in your feed — studying a picture, perusing the comment thread — they’ll take that as a signal that it’s something you care about. Facebook is doing this because it realizes that you probably don’t always like, share or comment on the stuff that pops up in your Facebook feed, even if it’s something you care to see. In other words: those endless baby photos and motivational fitness memes that you tend to scroll right on past? At least theoretically, this change allows Facebook’s algorithms to take the hint without requiring you to lift a finger.
