Gadgetory

behold the Google ization of Amazon I'm Bridget Carey and this is your scene that update amazon announced that it is spending nearly 1 billion dollars to buy the game streaming service twitch it's like a YouTube for people who just want to share footage of themselves playing video games it's often live streamed with this acquisition amazon is taking another step in becoming more like Google Amazon now owns a video network with a dedicated and engaged audience just look at the numbers back in 2013 twitch reported that viewers watched about an hour and 45 minutes of video on the site per day it gets 55 million visitors a month and more than half of those users spend more than 20 hours a week on twitch last year it exceeded a total of six million videos broadcasted and the number of videos uploaded keeps growing now that the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox one make it easy to send your gameplay to twitch with the push of a button if this whole trend of watching others play video games seems odd well there are a few reasons why it's popular some watch for the competitive gaming like tournaments some gamers are very entertaining with commentary as they play and some gamers just like to show off maybe they'll play through a level really fast and sometimes it's just weird there's currently a popular stream called fish place Street Fighter where a fish tank is rigged with cameras so if a fish swims to a certain spot it triggers the character in the street fighter game to jump or kick the audience is just what Amazon is looking for the average age is 21 and many users pay a subscription to support their favorite entertaining gamers I'm sure Amazon hopes to get this demographic interested in playing games or watching twitch on the fire TV streaming box and the Amazon fire phone switching gears to non gaming videos instagram has a new app for recording and sharing smooth time-lapse videos even while you're walking or driving it's called hyperlapse and instagram has programmed it so even if your hand isn't still it stabilizes the footage so doesn't look too shaky you said how fast you want the playback and then share a 15 second clip to Instagram if you want a video from a different perspective how about strapping a GoPro to your doggy GoPro is now selling a sixty-dollar camera harness for dogs called the GoPro fetch so you can capture your best friends perspective and cat lovers you don't have to feel left out of the pet tech there's a GPS tracking collar just for cats it's called the Paul track the creators in London are raising money on Kickstarter and are planning to sell it in November for 125 dollars with a ten-dollar monthly tracking fee that your tech news update you can always find more at cnet com from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey