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TECHNOLOGY A23
Friday 8 April 2016
Verizon dips another toe into online-video programming
RYAN NAKASHIMA the rights to Thursday Night This photo provided by AwesomenessTV, Hunter March hosts “Top Five Live,” AwesomenessTV’s
AP Business Writer Football, Time Warner Ca- daily live entertainment show on go90.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Could ble doing likewise with Los
the next “House of Cards” Angeles Dodgers baseball, Associated Press
be coming to your phone? or cable company Com-
That’s what Verizon hopes cast buying NBC Universal. spend more to make short- rizon would reserve some “Even if these things dou-
now that it’s paid more The investment gives Veri- form shows with top-level of that programming for a ble in two years, which
than $100 million for a zon a 24.5 percent stake in talent. That, in turn, will help new paid Go90 tier it plans is a high growth rate, so
piece of the online-video AwesomenessTV and more it build an audience older to launch later this year or what?” said Hal Vogel, an
studio AwesomenessTV. original video for its Go90 than the teen “Generation early next. analyst with Vogel Capital
It’s the latest attempt by a streaming service, which Z” crowd it now attracts But the investment — val- Management. “My feel-
maturing, mainstream cor- launched in September. It with shows like “Cheerlead- ued at roughly $159 million ing is that if they’re going
poration to find growth in will also help it make use of ers” and “Guidance.” — is tiny relative to Verizon to make a statement in
non-traditional video pro- its $4.4 billion purchase of The idea, Robbins said, is to Communications Inc.’s media and entertainment,
gramming that can reach AOL last year, which gave make shows on par with the $217 billion market value, they should make one gi-
younger audiences on Verizon a new capability to “high end of premium sub- and at best represents a ant statement instead of
smartphones and tablets. deliver ads on top of video. scription services — HBO, baby step by the mobile picking off these odds and
In 2014, for instance, Disney “Verizon has concluded Netflix or Showtime.” Ve- carrier. ends.”q
acquired online-video pro- that trying to extract more
ducer Maker Studios for a and more money out of
tab that eventually hit $625 data usage charges is a
million. An AT&T joint ven- dead-end street,” said
ture bought Fullscreen, a analyst Craig Moffett of
similar production compa- research firm MoffettNa-
ny, for an undisclosed sum thanson. Instead, it’s been
the same year. Hollywood’s focused on selling ads
DreamWorks Animation targeted to where its us-
bought AwesomenessTV in ers happen to be, which is
2013, paying a total of $113 “why they bought AOL and
million after the studio hit why they launched Go90,”
promised deal targets. he said. Now the company
In some ways, these ar- is focused on building up its
rangements are modern — library of stuff to watch —
albeit much smaller — ver- and, of course, to sell ads
sions of classic media deals against.
struck by companies anx- AwesomenessTV CEO and
ious to draw bigger audi- founder Brian Robbins said
ences. Think Twitter buying the money will allow it to
Facebook rearranging notification
buttons to highlight video
This image provided by Facebook shows examples of its live world’s largest social net- to live video as it vies pocket all the time.”
video feature on the smartphones. Associated Press work. against Periscope, a similar Zuckerberg gave a spon-
Messenger notifications will service owned by its smaller taneous demonstration of
MICHAEL LIEDTKE share snippets of their lives. move to the top of Face- rival, Twitter. Live video also live video’s unpredictability
AP Technology Writer Initially introduced as a tool book’s mobile apps near could help Facebook fend when he abruptly ended
MENLO PARK, Calif. (AP) — for celebrities eight months the search box. off an emerging threat his broadcast a few min-
Facebook is rearranging ago, Facebook’s live video The app update for Apple from the rapidly growing utes after it began, leaving
the notification panel on option is now available in and Android devices will message service Snap- hundreds of thousands of
its mobile apps in an effort 60 countries. be rolled out in phases and chat, which says its 100 mil- viewers to wonder if some-
to broaden the audience To help promote it, Face- take several weeks to com- lion users watch about 8 bil- thing had gone awry.
creating, watching and book is moving the button plete. lion video clips per day. The mystery remained un-
reacting to live video on its for its Messenger service so Facebook also is adding fil- Facebook’s 1.6 billion users resolved until about an
social network. that the new video option ters to live video and mak- collectively watch about hour later when Zucker-
The shift announced can be highlighted on the ing it possible to express 100 million hours of video berg appeared in another
Wednesday is part of Face- notification panel. When more emotions during a per day, most of which isn’t live video. Instead sitting
book’s effort to turn its live pressed, the video but- presentation by press- being shown live. The com- on a couch in an office by
video feature into a mar- ton will show a directory of ing on “love,” ‘’haha,” pany is now trying to push himself as he had been in
quee attraction as more live streams from a user’s ‘’wow,” ‘’sad” or “angry” live video to the forefront the first take, Zuckerberg
people use their smart- friends, as well as segments emojis. Those are the same of how people share their was standing in a room
phones to record and available to anyone on the options that supplement lives and whatever else filled with the engineering
Facebook’s “like” button they find interesting. team that worked on the
for photo and text posts. “We think of this as the changes to live video.
During a live video, the re- power to broadcast from Facebook Inc. isn’t show-
actions will float across the a smartphone to anyone ing ads in or near live video
screen to provide more in the world,” Facebook feeds, but the Menlo Park,
dynamic feedback to the CEO Mark Zuckerberg said California, company isn’t
video. in a live video presentation ruling out that option to fuel
The update underscores Wednesday. “It’s like hav- its revenue growth.q
Facebook’s commitment ing a TV camera in your
