Technology Roundup – Twitter acquires Revue to bring paid newsletters to platform; AMD posts Q4 beats on gaming and EPYC strength, provides upside outlook

Published on: January 26, 2021
Author: Amy Liu

Twitter acquires Revue to bring paid newsletters to platform

Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) acquires editorial newsletter tool Revue for undisclosed terms.

Revue allows users to publish editorial newsletters. Twitter says it’s committed to creating a “durable incentive model” for writers/users wanting to create paid newsletters.

Starting today, Twitter is making Revue Pro features free and is lowering the paid newsletter fee by 5%.

Key quote from the announcement blog post: “Revue will accelerate our work to help people stay informed about their interests while giving all types of writers a way to monetize their audience – whether it’s through the one they built at a publication, their website, on Twitter, or elsewhere.”

AMD posts Q4 beats on gaming and EPYC strength, provides upside outlook

Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) is up slightly after hours on Q4 results that topped estimates and pushed revenue up 52% Y/Y to $3.2B. Rival Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) is currently down about 0.6%.

Computing and Graphics segment revenue was $1.96B (consensus: $1.77B), up 18% Y/Y and Q/Q on strong Ryzen processor sales. Client processor ASPs were lower on the year due to the higher mobile processor mix, but Radeon graphics product ASPs were up on the quarter and year.

Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom segment revenue was $1.28B (consensus: $1.23B), up 13% on the quarter and 176% Y/Y, driven by increased game console-related semi-custom revenue and reflecting new deals for the EPYC data center processors.

Non-GAAP gross margin was 44.8% versus the 48.1% guidance and 44.6% in last year’s quarter.

For Q1, AMD guides revenue of ~$3.2B (consensus: $2.72B), plus or minus $100M, and non-GAAP gross margin of 46%.

For FY21, AMD sees revenue growth of 37% on the year and non-GAAP gross margin of 47%. Consensus estimates expected about 28% revenue growth.

EU antitrust chief taking ‘keen interest’ in Google ad system

EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager has a “keen interest” in online advertising at Google (GOOG +0.8%, GOOGL +0.6%).

Speaking at a news conference in Brussels, she says she doesn’t know if it can become a “full-fledged” competition case, but “we get quite a lot of people who are uncomfortable as to how it works and of course we would want to fully understand it,” according to Bloomberg.

A meeting with CEO Sundar Pichai yesterday focused on new digital rules as well as a couple of competition issues, she says.

The European Commission is keeping a close eye on Google’s compliance with an order dating to a probe of Android, which directed Google to grant choice for search and browser apps in the mobile OS.

Elsewhere on the ad privacy front, Google has reported it’s making progress on an attempt at replacing advertising cookies with a more privacy-focused implementation.

Technology