Twitter to Buy Machine-Learning Company Magic Pony
June 20 2016 - 11:20AM
Dow Jones News
Twitter Inc. said Monday that it bought Magic Pony Technology, a
London-based machine-learning company, in a move to help bolster
its live and streaming video content.
Magic Pony's technology allows for better-quality video
compression, essentially allowing for better-looking videos that
use less data and are less choppy.
Social media sites like Twitter and rivals Facebook Inc. and
Alphabet Inc.'s YouTube have been investing and promoting
live-streaming video, especially on smartphones. Live video took
off in early 2015 around the time a pair of apps—Meerkat and
Twitter's Periscope—allowed people toting smartphones to stream
live at any point.
Freezing videos due to unreliable networks are a concern for
online streaming as frequently both the uploader and the viewer
rely on sometimes choppy cellphone and Wi-Fi networks.
The London-based Magic Pony will join Twitter's growing London
office and serve as the European base for Twitter's cortex group—a
team of engineers, data scientists and researchers using machine
learning to improve Twitter's products.
Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.
Across the technology world, researchers are increasingly using
one branch of artificial intelligence, called machine learning, to
enable computers to "teach" themselves new skills by reviewing huge
data sets. In March, Alphabet's Google used a neural network, a
type of Machine learning, to beat a human champion at the complex
and ancient game Go.
Twitter, like much of the web, has expanded from its text-only
roots and has increasingly promoted still pictures, animated GIFs
and video content.
In recent years, the social-media company has struggled to
increase its user base or revenue as fast as Wall Street expects
and amid concerns that the platform remains too niche for the
everyman.
Monday's machine-learning acquisition comes after buying fellow
machine-learning companies Madbits, which focused on image search,
in July 2014 and Whetlab, which makes machine-learning systems
easier to develop, in June 2015.
Shares of Twitter rose 1.6% to $16.35 in morning trading.
Write to Austen Hufford at austen.hufford@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 20, 2016 11:05 ET (15:05 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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