Amazon is about to buy Twitch, a video game live-streaming service, according to reports.
Neither company has made an official announcement as of 2:30 p.m. ET Monday but news services, including the Wall Street Journal are reporting the acquisition, citing unnamed sources.
The Journal also is reporting that it's a $1 billion acquisition, which comes on the heels of talks falling off between Twitch and Google.
"It's all bits and bytes to Amazon," said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. "Twitch has around 60 million users, which is a pretty big chunk of folks. For Amazon, this would be all about eyeballs for ads and other content -- eyeballs that are there for a lot of time, and with a market that skews young."
Using Twitch, users can record and show their own gaming experiences, as well as chat with other players.
Whether Amazon is heavily into gaming at this point would be irrelevant, according to Olds.
The average Twitch user, for instance, plays about 106 minutes a day. Those users, who range in age between 18 and 49, say they watch less TV in order to do more gaming. That means it would be a highly captive audience for Amazon.
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