Twitter to Buy Machine-Learning Company Magic Pony

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 [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 20, 2016 11:05 ET (15:05 GMT)

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