All right, so you’ve heard CES is about the wearable Internet this year —the gadgets you whip out at a party or over dinner or (God forbid) in the car. But back in the living room, there’s a war being waged for that much-maligned piece of furniture we all end up in front of sooner or later. Call it the Idiot Box, the Boob Tube or whatever you want—the majority of media consumption still happens in front of the television, and whether it’s gaming, movie watching, Netflix or just listening to the stereo, tech giants are fighting tooth and nail for a seat on your couch. Here’s what they’re bringing to the party.

The Champion From Kabletown: Comcast

What it is: Never underestimate the people who own the pipe. Rarely has there been a more widely accepted misnomer than “cord-cutter.” Even a cord-cutter gets the Internet, and he probably gets it from his cable company. Through a cord. Several cable companies have been slow to adopt high-tech initiatives, unfortunately for their subscribers—it’s expensive to implement changes across millions or hundreds of thousands of users, especially if your systems are cobbled together from acquisitions and sales over the years. But one of the most progressive on that score is Comcast (not coincidentally the owner of television network behemoth NBCUniversal), which has been rolling out its “See It” features. They essentially turn Twitter into a remote control that works from anywhere you get cell service—you can DVR something from a restaurant or click over to it from your couch, all using your smartphone.

This is only the tip of the iceberg, says Charlie Herrin, svp of product design and development for Comcast, who calls it “a Jetsons moment.”

“From your couch, you can flip through, look at and delete all your voicemails,” Herrin says of last year’s feature rollout. “[Next] we have our home security app so you can look at your security cameras, change the thermostat … it’s pretty powerful. You can control it from your phone, and you can see it on the big screen.”

Why it will work: Comcast is easily the largest multisystem operator in the country, with 21.6 million subscribers, and the only one that produces as much content (16 cable networks, including its joint ventures, as well as NBC proper, Telemundo, Universal Pictures, Universal Music and several TV studios). It’s uniquely positioned among its competitors to control the living room simply because it owns so much of what you watch and listen to.

Why it won’t work: Comcast’s core business is still cable distribution, and if you’re not in its massive footprint, you’ll have to search for your innovation elsewhere.

The Fruit With A Grudge: Apple

What it is: CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly described Apple TV as a “hobby” for the tech company when grilled by reporters on the does-it-or-doesn’t-it-really-exist service; this, to put it mildly, is starting to look disingenuous. Until late last year, Apple TV was just a bridge device for your iTunes purchases; now it gets authenticated services like HBO Go and WatchESPN, monthly subscriptions like Hulu and Netflix, and freebies like PBS. Apple declined to provide an interview for this article, though a representative did say that the company would continue to provide “new features and content options for Apple TV users.”

Like Samsung, Apple is anxious to make everything it makes compatible with everything else it makes; iTunes Radio, iCloud and AirPlay all work seamlessly with the $100 Apple TV device.

Why it will work:“I walked the CES floor last year,” says Scott Hess, svp, human intelligence for SMG agency Spark, “and all the TV manufacturers were showing off software features on very kludgy, idiosyncratic menus.” Hess, who makes no bones about his own status as a serious Apple-o-phile, observes that it’s less about who has the greatest insight and more about who can make that insight accessible. Apple is great at that. “The people who own the most intuitive interface own the living room,” he adds. Success, Hess suggests, will ultimately be determined by the number of people who are already in your corner. “You [win market share] through a superior interface, and you probably do that through an installed base,” he says. And of course, mobile and tablet consumption has helped define who controls those bases pretty solidly. “Active consumption is owned by either Apple or Samsung,” Hess sums up. “Your Coke and Pepsi have been established.”

Why it won’t work: Apple doesn’t really have any content deals as such—Hulu and Netflix negotiate and hold those, so there’s no Apple TV-exclusive content—and products like the Apple TV and the Google Chromecast are simply bridge devices that run identical apps at this point. It’s not hard to imagine a future where similar devices are so common that it doesn’t particularly matter who the manufacturer is, and in that scenario, Apple’s signature corporate strategy—its promotion of Apple products using other Apple products in pursuit of an all-Apple household—might come back to bite it. If everybody is playing nice except Apple, consumers may take their toys and go elsewhere.

The All-Seeing, All-Knowing: Google

What it is: Google’s Chromecast bridge device was a triumph of launch marketing. The PR blitz that accompanied its debut was so convincing that the company ran out of its initial promotion—a three-month trial subscription to Netflix, which would have cost $24 of the $35 price tag for the device all by itself—in three days, in addition to selling out on Amazon and in Google’s own Play store. Like iTunes and Amazon.com, Google has a large library of immediately accessible pay-per-episode (or movie) video and audio content; like Apple TV, Chromecast supports several different apps that also stream shows and songs. Most impressively, you can broadcast to it from your Android phone or tablet …or your iPhone or iPad. That in itself would be a risky strategy without the 10,000-lb. gorilla of content licensors, Netflix, on its side. With the Netflix stamp of approval for the phone-to-television broadcast ability, others like Hulu have followed suit, and most recently Barry Diller’s middle finger to the broadcasters, Aereo.

Why it will work:“The great thing about Chromecast is that it works with your phone and your tablet—you’re looking around for something cool to watch and boom, it shows up on your big screen,” enthuses Albert Lai, CTO of Brightcove. Lai says that Google is also the first to take advantage of a cool, fairly recent idea called CEC—consumer electronics control—that enables the user to hijack all of a TV’s functions without using the remote control or the buttons on the set. “If your Chromecast is plugged in to an HDMI port, it can actually enable a CEC TV to be turned on,” says Lai. “It’ll turn it on and tune it automatically to the port that your Chromecast is plugged into.” With Aereo compatibility on the horizon, it might also enable true cord-cutting. Given the right data package, you could stream everything you wanted from a cell tower and kiss your cable operator goodbye.

Why it won’t work: Like Apple TV, Chromecast is still at the mercy of smartphone app creators doing all the heavy lifting with content licensing. It just streams what other people have inked the deals for, and if, say, CBS’ agreement with Netflix goes south, that’s it for any Chromecast users who happen to like Star Trek.

It’s in Your Pocket and It’s Happy to See You: Samsung

What it is: Samsung’s highest-end televisions make going to the movie theater seem low-tech and redundant. The 2014 smart TV, unveiled this week at CES, stands at 105 inches corner-to-corner with a curvature that looks like a personal Imax screen. It also watches back. Hand motions can tell it what to do (“finger gestures,” according to Samsung, which is trying to make a distinction between less-specific hand gestures that debuted on last year’s TVs). There’s voice control, too, and the host of apps includes stalwarts like Netflix and Hulu as well as PC and mobile natives like Facebook and Skype that the content-focused devices don’t feature. Newer Samsung Blu-ray players have plenty of these features, too.

Why it will work:“Samsung moves a lot of hardware,” says Spark’s Hess bluntly. It’s a company that makes more machines even than Apple, though it’s comparatively new at the software game. Blu-ray players, televisions, phones, tablets, even a goofy-looking watch. Last year at CES, the company made a point of bragging that it had adopted DLNA across all of its devices—an open-source protocol that allowed its phones, tablets and TVs to talk not just to each other (in order to swap videos and songs and even stream video and audio to nearby televisions and speakers, for example), but also to hardware from competitors like Toshiba, Motorola and Nokia, as well. The last time a big chunk of the market agreed together to take a jump forward like that was the widespread adoption of Bluetooth, which is showing its age these days. Where Apple’s strategy has been “make everything in your house Apple,” Samsung’s has been “make something in your house Samsung.”

Why it won’t work: That strategy can backfire, too. “The TV manufacturers are always working to update their interfaces,” says Lai. “All the TV guys will have their new interfaces, and we’ll see what those look like.” They may have compatibility across just as many devices as Samsung, or more. LG, for example, has a new line of high-end speakers it’s touting, and Sony has a shiny new video game console in the PS4 that also plays Blu-rays, Netflix, and acts as a hub for toys like the popular Sonos audio controller. In order to succeed, Samsung’s competitive edge will have to be the quality of its software and that one great hurdle: price. Samsung’s crown jewel last year—an 85-inch 4K smart TV—cost a whopping $40,000. From the Amazon reviews: “It fits perfectly into the arms of the T-Rex fossil I just brought home from China. It’s like YOU KNEW, Samsung. Thank you.” Another wag: “I purchased this for my Atari 2600 and wow did it make a difference! Also, I am very thankful that it has low energy costs as I am on a very tight budget.” You get the idea.

It Was Making Computers Before You Were Born: Microsoft

What it is: The Xbox One runs cutting-edge games, hosts video apps, plays music, manages your social media, provides a snazzy interface for your cable channels and your DVR, is on a first-name basis with your Windows PC, and makes amaaaazing French toast. “I made fun of it when they came up with the name, but I think I was wrong,” confesses Lai. “It’s one box to rule them all.” In a departure from its usual tactics in the dozen-year war with Sony for market share among gamers, Microsoft has opted for compatibility over horsepower in a bid to make its new device indispensable for people beyond nerd-dom. The expansion is not a totally new idea to this generation of hardware—both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 were compatible with a host of apps and devices—but the One takes the notion to a new level, totally taking over your television.

Why it will work: The buzz around the One is tremendous—there was almost no debate about whether Xbox or Sony had debuted with a better library of launch titles (“all your base are belong to Xbox,” as gamers would say), and the no-controller technology Xbox tried out with the Kinect has advanced considerably with the One. A massive ad campaign pointing up not just the gaming but the video, audio and toast-making capabilities of the new machine has resulted in plenty of media coverage, and Microsoft sold some 2 million machines at $500 apiece during the holiday shopping season.

Why it won’t work: Advance reviews pretty universally said that while the Xbox One had more bells and whistles, Sony’s PS4 was faster when it came to gaming, which is still the core feature of the Xbox. It’s impossible to tell from direct sales numbers which machine is more popular. No sooner do they arrive in stores than they sell out and end up on the secondary market. But there are ways to measure scalper sales. As of Dec. 23, about 33,000 Xboxes had passed through online auction house eBay; new PS4s, by contrast, had been sold 65,000 times. That’s not necessarily the kiss of death—there may simply be more PlayStations on the market, or the Xboxes may be going for higher prices—but it’s not a great sign.

PlayStation caused a stir at CES this morning when Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Andrew House announced that the company would be launching not just a new service with DVR, on-demand and live television, but also a streaming game service that would ultimately allow users to play the company's vast game library on tablets and its Vita device.

PlayStation Now sounds like more than just an XBox One rip-off. Sony, one of the largest producers of film and TV in the world, has fewer barriers to content distribution than anyone else in the tech space. "We are one of the largest entertainment companies in the world and we will use our unique combination of entertainment properties [...] and devices," House told the audience at the CES keynote. "We plan to start testing this service in the U.S. later this year."

House described PlayStation Now as "a cloud-based service" that provides "the most popular live TV programs combined with a large library of on-demand content." With respect to gaming, House promised a low-latency streaming experience of The Last of Us, one of the last PS4 games to push the capabilities of the hardware. It's hard to imagine—that particular game had long loading times from the disc—but as a bid to resurrect a piece of gaming hardware, the service sounds almost too good to be true.

The Xbox has been promoted as a one-box solution to cable and gaming clutter; Sony now appears to be proposing to provide all the content, as well as the single-box answer.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on Thursday announced plans to launch a new digital network called NFL Now, which will stream original content to a range of connected devices that includes everything from smartphones to Xboxes. A spokesman confirmed to Adweek that the app will be ad-supported, though possibly not on its higher tier, where a fee will apply.

If that sounds familiar, it ought to—WatchESPN, ESPN’s streaming app, also offers a host of football content, and the WWE is debuting a platform originally marketed as a linear network on digital devices at the end of the month. But unlike Bristol’s service, NFL Now will not offer streams of live games. Instead, the new network will provide highlights, specially-produced content from every NFL franchise and archival footage from NFL Films.

Set to launch in July, NFL Now’s content will be tailored to individual users, allowing them to set team preferences, follow players in their fantasy lineups and so on.

“Eventually, no two users should get the same experience on NFL Now,” said an NFL Media spokesperson, who added that users can up- and downvote videos to help the personalization process along.

It’s a better value proposition for consumers than it may sound at first blush—for one thing, the basic service will be free.

NFL Media COO Brian Rolapp characterized consumer desire for digital content as “insatiable,” adding that the app will be available online as well as through various mobile and gaming devices.

Rolapp also said the league would follow up with a premium edition of NFL Now at a later date. Programming and the fee structure for the premium version were not disclosed. “It’s too early” in the development process for such particulars to be ironed out, Rolapp said.

If the league is looking to clear the rights to the URL NFLNOW.com, it will have to buy it from under a cybersquatter. Registered by Domain Asset Holdings of Potomac, Md., the asking price for the domain is $10,000.

Angry Birds is getting ready to introduce in-game digital video ads in an expansion of its advertising products that the company will unveil soon, according to Michele Tobin, Rovio’s head of advertising.

Tobin told Adweek today that the company’s games provide premium inventory for video advertising from brands.

“We’re rolling out new video products in Q2 that will be built into the gameplay of a number of games,” Tobin said. “In the mobile video space, there’s a lack of publishers who provide real scale and premium environments with total transparency.”

Rovio’s Angry Birds portfolio has amassed 2 billion downloads with more than 200 million users a month, Tobin said, providing a brand-safe place with guaranteed audience.

Tobin has been building Rovio’s ad business for less than two years, and she declined to say how much revenue it has generated so far. Rovio already introduced pre-roll video ad units through its online cartoon network called ToonsTV, which streams content from Angry Birds and partners like Sony and Disney.

Rovio’s first free-to-play app—the Angry Birds GO racing game—introduced new brand advertising potential when it launched in December. That game features sponsored opportunities for brands, which deliver in-game lifts to players, as in State Farm Insurance repairs a user’s cart and Pepperidge Farm lends a power boost.

“The path we started to go down the past year focused a lot on building native ad units, ad integrations that felt more part of the game, and moving away from standard display,” Tobin explained.

Tobin did not give full details on how the video ads in games would work, but she said they could provide incentives for users to watch them.

Mobile video is a growing piece of the digital ad space. Spending on mobile video is expected to grow 81.2 percent this year, according to eMarketer. Google’s YouTube grew its revenue by 66 percent last year thanks to its digital video dominance, and Facebook is building out its video ad capabilities to capitalize as well.

Finland-based Rovio has made its money from its paid games and global merchandise sales. It has yet to release its 2013 earnings but revenue doubled to $195 million in 2012—the year that its ad business unit was born.

Candy Crush Saga is headed to Wall Street with a public offering that could value the company at up to $10 billion, according to the filings. The company behind the game, King Digital Entertainment, announced its intentions to sell its stock, and released financial data that show its value skyrocketed last year during the Candy Crush rush. Here’s how:

1. In January 2013, King’s private stock (for employees and initial shareholders) was valued at about $10 a share, according to the filings released this week. In January of this year, options were granted with an exercise price of $78.43.
2. At $78.43, King would be worth $9.4 billion, according to the number of outstanding shares (120 million) the company said it would have after its initial public offering.
3. King said it would raise at least $500 million when it sells shares, which will likely be in the second quarter.
4. King’s success is thanks to Candy Crush, which helped grow revenue from $164.4 million in 2012 to $1.88 billion last year. Profits went from $7.8 million in 2012 to $567.6 million last year.
5. Candy Crush attracts a daily audience of 93 million players. Its next most popular game, Pet Rescue Saga, attracts an audience of 15 million daily users.
6. King gets most of its money from mobile platforms, and mobile revenue rose from less than $20 million in 2012 to $1.3 billion last year.
7. Its mobile revenue accounted for 72 percent of all revenue last year.
8. The concerns with King, as with any gaming company, is its reliance on just a few hits for its success. Candy Crush was responsible for nearly 80 percent of its revenue last year.
9. Also, the company showed signs of slowing growth already. Fourth quarter revenue was lower than the third quarter—$602 million, down from $620 million.
10. King also has dropped its advertising business last year—no in-app inventory for sale on Candy Crush. Only 1 percent of revenue was from selling ads last year.

The Apple Tesla iCar is not so far fetched now, is it? It’s long been a vision of many Apple watchers that the iPhone maker could buy the electric car maker and build the ultimate mobile device.

Wall Street analysts like Colin Gillis of BGC Partners has said that Tesla is just the kind of forward-thinking, growth company, product category that Apple needs. CEO Tim Cook’s company has not had a world-altering hit product since the iPad in 2010, and since then it’s been all about incremental upgrades to hardware and fresh software, but no new product line on its balance sheet. There has not been a new iDevice to follow the Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad with billions in fresh quarterly revenue.

Apple is expected to release a watch, but while that prospect used to cause some excitement, now Apple fans are not sure that a $250 wearable gadget will be enough to restore that supersized growth.

Apple's stock is in a bit of a rut as analysts wonder whether the company is just gliding like Microsoft last decade. Shares are down almost $200 from their 2012 peak.

That’s why reports this week that Cook and Tesla’s Elon Musk have been in discussions has reawakened Apple enthusiasts who have been waiting for the next big thing—an Apple leap that does more than add a half-inch to the iPhone screen.

Here are some ideas that could lead to billions in sales at Apple, or enough to move the needle at a company that already generates $60 billion a quarter and has $160 billion in the bank.

1. Apple Tesla car
The electronic car maker is more valuable than it’s ever been, with its shares at all time highs with its stock above $210. That still only makes the company worth $25 billion, or just a little more than WhatsApp, and Apple has makes that much in profits in half a year. So it can afford the futuristic car company, and who wouldn’t want to drive an iCar? Apple has enough money to start its own bank to help customers with financing, as well.

2. iCondos
The only luxury cooler than a car made by Apple would be an apartment designed by Jony Ive, the industrial designer behind the iPhone. “What about an iHome Apartment building in San Francisco and New York City, fully wired with all the latest apple gear,” Gillis said. “Apple could rent them as fast as it could build them.”

3. Apple TV
Apple already has a set-top box to stream movies and shows, and it continues to enhance the software and the content offerings. Still, many expect the company to build a flat-screen television with all this software built in and a high-definition Retina display. Still, Apple needs to go further to conquer the living room, and could take a cue from Hulu, Amazon and Netflix by producing its own shows and movies.

4. Video Games
Apple already is a major force in the game industry with its mobile devices doubling as mini-game consoles. Reportedly Apple is getting ready to upgrade its TV box to deliver games, but it could take a bigger approach, perhaps buying a new gaming startup like OUYA or Oculus VR.

5. Apple Bank
Payments are a strong suit for Apple with all the iTunes accounts connected to credit cards of users. Cook has signaled even stronger interest in the area, and reportedly wants to eventually to let users pay at stores using the iPhone. A company like Square, started by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and valued at about $5 billion, would boost Apple’s payment ambitions.

6. Apple Messenger
Apple missed its chance to buy Twitter before it went public and swelled to a $30 billion valuation. So no social media acquisition. How about a messaging company, like Facebook buying WhatsApp? This is the latest mobile gold rush and there are any number of players to pick from—even after WhatsApp sold for $19 billion, Microsoft scooped up Skype for $8 billion, and Viber sold for $900 million. Apple has always wanted a network that could circumvent phone companies, and messaging apps, whether voice or text based, could connect users over the Internet.

QuizUp, the mobile trivia game, launched on Android today after becoming a fast hit on the iPhone last year. The Iceland-based Plain Vanilla Games also launched QuizUp on the iPad last month, and CEO Thor Fridriksson said that he has been bombarded with potential users asking for the Android version.

QuizUp reached one million users in eight days after its iPhone release in November—one of the fastest growing iPhone apps of all time—and now has more than 10 million users. Its popularity was mostly due to word of mouth, but the marketing team at Fiksu also helped to get the word out. 

Fiksu said its marketing was responsible for an average of $1 spent for every iOS user acquired, which was below the average cost per install in the mobile gaming industry.

QuizUp is focused on growing its user base with the Android launch, but Fridriksson said it is also working on native ads that mix its quizzes with marketing and brands.

“We are in heavy talks with lots of very interesting partners when it comes to native advertising,” Fridriksson said.

In December, QuizUp raised $22 million in a fundraising round led by Sequoia Capital.

“Still looming is how are we going to monetize and that’s a question for lot of social apps like Snapchat,” Fridriksson said. “We have really exciting chance to work on doing monetization that actually gives value to the users and we want to do that correctly.”

Fridriksson has envisioned sponsored quizzes for brands on related topics, like car trivia for automakers and film trivia for movies. Movies and shows already are popular quiz themes.

QuizUp’s team is scheduled to be among the startups attending SXSW.

QuizUp has more than one million Android signups since being made available on the mobile operating system on March 6, according to the count on Google’s Play store. The trivia app, made by Plain Vanilla Games, had already been among the fastest growing iOS games before displaying similar success with Android.

Released on iPhones in November, QuizUp quickly amassed one million users on its way to more than 10 million. The Iceland-based company is amassing a loyal following that's interested in trivia across more than 400 topics.

Thor Fridriksson, QuizUp CEO, has told Adweek that the average user spends about 30 minutes a day in trivia challenges. The app also lets users discuss topics on bulletin boards and message each other individually.

Additionally, the games provider has indicated an interest in offering branded quizzes. Big brands can already be found in the game—although they are not paid placements—with categories based on Disney and Harry Potter.

There is a quiz called Beer Logos, yet another area in which trivia clearly blends with brands. Perhaps Budweiser will pay QuizUp in order to hijack appearances by Coors (or vice-versa).

At any rate, the potential for ad dollars is there.

Meanwhile, in December, Plain Vanilla raised $22 million in a fundraising round led by Sequoia Capital.

Game Show Network (GSN) is evidently crushing it with advertisers, so it has greenlit four new series for this year with the goal of further increasing female viewership.

For instance, there's Idiot Test, a brainteaser game show revealed by the company today that's hosted by comedian Ben Gleib. It joins It Takes a Church, a matchmaking series the network dubbed the “anti-Bachelor," and a show called Skin Wars that's hosted by Rebecca Rominjn—a competition-style show that will pit 10 bodypainters against each other for a cash prize. And Mind of a Man recently debuted as a game show where female contestants probe the male psyche.

John Zaccario, GSN's evp of sales, said that his company added roughly 70 advertisers in 2013 but didn't name brands. Last year, he said the cable channel grew its key demo, women aged 25 to 54, by 38 percent during the day and 47 percent at primetime. The network, which is a partnership between DirecTV and Sony Pictures Television, is now available in 80 million homes.

"We’ve added new formats to some of the categories that matter most to contemporary audiences—comedy, relationships, technology and faith," Zaccario said, appearing at GSN's Upfront 2014 in New York on Tuesday. "We’ve evolved the notion of game to involve new users, and I’m very happy to say it’s working.”

In addition, the network has ordered pilots for shows called App Wars and Say What? (Interestingly, the latter is based off the childhood game Telephone.) Four other series are in development as well, including one called The Line that's about—what else?—waiting in line. And popular series The American Bible Challenge and The Chase will return.

GSN also shared that it has been experimenting with online video over the past few months. David Goldhill, chief exec of the Santa Monica, Calif.-based company, remained mum on the details, but told Adweek that the digital format was a way to unearth talent and concepts.

“I’d like to think we have a pretty good understanding of game entertainment—how that translates into video is the next stage of evolution,” he said.

Jayson Love works a regular 40-hour a week job. From Monday through Friday, the creator of the Twitch channel ManVsGame logs on around midnight to settle into eight hours of livestreamed gaming.

The Billings, Mt. resident definitely isn’t in the top echelon of gamers. He crawls through games at a snail’s pace. But, thanks to his penchant for wanting to destroy everything and tendency to randomly burst into song, he’s one of the most entertaining gamers to watch online—and it’s looking like he’ll take home six figures this year, thanks to Twitch's partner program that allows people to monetize their streams.

“I had this dream of making a living playing video and chatting with people on the Internet,” Love said. “That was supposed to be in the reward in and of itself. It meant I didn’t have to go to some soul-sucking retail job. I wanted to make enough to get by and still be happy doing what I’m doing. I’m certainly getting by. I’ve never felt such financial freedom than I do now.”

Long thought of as a bastion for watching eSports, Twitch is quickly showing that it's not just another gaming site. The video platform has become one of the most popular sites for livestreaming video game-related content, whether it is a press conference to announce a new game or just someone who wants to show off his or her gameplay.

Twitch began as a spinoff site from Justin.TV in June 2011, with a focus on allowing the gaming community to broadcast its interests. Today, it’s currently available for many of the top platforms, including PCs, PS4 and, as of last week, Xbox One.

On Monday, it announced its first mobile gaming streaming partnership. Developer Gameloft will allow users to livestream Asphalt 8: Airborne experiences, tentatively starting on March 20. More mobile games and developers are expected to come on board in the near future.

It’s sure to be the start of a long and fruitful relationship between Twitch and the smartphone and tablet gaming industry, which is expected to reach $17.1 billion by the end of the year, according to Gartner, Inc. The entire video game industry as a whole is expected to top a whopping $101 billion in 2014.

Jonathan Simpson-Bint, chief revenue officer for Twitch, explained that the move to mobile will help the company reach a wider audience it has yet to tap into: the casual gamer.

“I think that’s a really big future for Twitch games to occupy a really important part in our culture,” he said. “Millennials are more likely to be playing a game than watching TV.”

Already, Twitch’s 45 million unique viewers per month see 106 minutes of livestreamed gaming per day. On his best day, Love noted he got 24,000 viewers to tune in.

“The thing that [you've] got to remember about Twitch [is] we need to be thought about with the likes of Facebook, Netflix and Hulu. Our cohorts aren’t IGN,” Simpson-Bint said. “They’re writing about the news: The news is actually happening on places like Twitch.”

Monthly, viewers see 400 to 500 million ad impressions. Most of them are video ads, and the site boasts a 90-plus percent ad completion rate. According to media mobile ad serving and analytics company Celtra Inc., the average site boasts a paltry not-quite 50 percent rate.

Part of the reason for Twitch’s success in getting viewers to not skip ads may have to do with the fact that the content is livestreamed and not on demand, Simpson-Bint suggested. Viewers are it for the long run.

It may also be due to the fact that video game culture has lent itself towards communal viewing. PR director Chase, who goes by his first name only, pointed out that in the industry’s infancy, people spent their time watching their friends play Atari at home or cheering the high scorer on at the arcade. 

“More people spent time watching people play than playing themselves. People have always been watching games, but it wasn’t until the ubiquity of broadband that we were able to watch games on a bigger scale,” he said.

It’s important to note that ManVsGame is one of Twitch’s best success stories. The site has over 1 million broadcasters per month, but only about 5,100 on them derive ad revenue through the Twitch partner program. Not everyone on the site has the ability to retire to a life of leisure and sore thumbs.

But, with mobile traffic Twitch’s fastest growing sector, there is a possibility that it could be poised to go from the streaming underground to becoming a household name for anyone who plays games.

“We envision a day where playing a game and broadcasting a game are the same thing, and (mobile game streaming) gets us closer to that,” Chase said. 

Tango is the latest messaging app to attract big dollars, with Alibaba Group leading a fundraising round of $280 million. The Mountain View, Calif-company is among the growing mobile messaging apps with a strong emphasis on gaming and a user feed that shows native advertising.

The app has 70 million active users. It also has a deal with Twitter’s MoPub mobile exchange to sell advertising such as app-install messages.

It competes with the likes of WhatsApp, WeChat, Line and Kik. WhatsApp, with almost 600 million users, recently sold to Facebook in a deal worth $19 billion. Alibaba Group is the Chinese e-commerce giant in which Yahoo is a major investor. Yahoo’s co-founder Jerry Yang, who is no longer officially attached to the company, was an early investor in Tango.

Since its founding in 2009, the company raised $87 million. It offers mobile activities like messaging, gaming and music. In December, it partnered with Spotify, the music streaming service.

Alibaba is set to sell its stock publicly in an offering that could rival Facebook’s $16 billion raised on Wall Street in 2012. Alibaba contributed $215 million in Tango’s fundraising round. Early investors participated as well, including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Access Industries and Qualcomm Ventures.

Facebook has just announced a $2 billion deal to buy Oculus VR, the immersive virtual reality headset maker. In the announcement, CEO Mark Zuckerberg reiterated his company's mobile-first focus while stating that the Oculus headset sets the stage for the future of entertainment and communications.

The Irvine, Calif.-based company's Oculus Rift headset covers the eyes of users and plants them in a virtual reality world in which they can play games, watch movies and interact in new ways. It made considerable buzz at South by Southwest Interactive earlier this month.

"Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate," Zuckerberg said in a press release.

In 2012, Oculus raised $2.5 million in a campaign on Kickstarter, the crowdfunding website that allows tinkerers to raise money from the masses if their ideas catch fire, which the Rift did. Ten thousand Kickstarter members supported the project.

Last year, the company raised $75 million in a fundraising round led by Mark Andreessen and raised more than $90 million total from venture capital.

This is Facebook’s third acquisition of more than $1 billion, including Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion and WhatsApp earlier this year for $19 billion.

Well, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is clearly excited about the virtual reality future, but not everyone is excited to have him in the close-knit Oculus VR community.

Zuckerberg just announced that Facebook bought the virtual reality headset maker Oculus, a seemingly odd fit but a potentially revolutionary one for the social network. Still, as with many Facebook acquisitions, there is an initial outcry from the community of the acquired digital property.

Turns out some people don't like being a part of Zuckerberg's exotic collection. Just after the announcement, already one game maker protested by saying he wouldn't develop a game for the Oculus.

Markus Persson, developer of the hit game Minecraft, tweeted that he was in talks to bring the game to the Oculus headset, which immerses you in a virtual reality world, but now he was cancelling any plans.

We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus. I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out.

— Markus Persson (@notch) March 25, 2014

"We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus," Persson tweeted. "I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out."

The Oculus was developed following a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign in 2012 in which it raised $2.5 million.

Zuckerberg and Oculus founder Brandon Iribe held a conference call with analysts today to discuss the deal, and Facebook's founder clearly is a big fan of the technology.

"It's different from anything I've ever experienced in my life," Zuckerberg said, describing the virtual reality headset called the Oculus Rift, which covers half your face with a screen.

The device is mostly used for gaming now but has potential applications in other forms of entertainment and communications.

Zuckerberg said the goggles could take you into stores virtually, doctor visits or court side at the game.

"Imagine sharing not just moments with friends online but entire experiences and adventures," he said.

Oculus could be the computing platform of the future, Zuckerberg said, and of course there could be advertising. But for now they are focused on getting the device to market—so far only developer kits have been sold.

While Facebook imagined the possibilities of its new toy, investors were left wondering when the shopping spree would stop. Facebook has now bought three companies, which each cost billions of dollars.

The Oculus deal will amount to more than $2 billion. Facebook spent $1 billion on Instagram and committed $19 billion to WhatsApp.

When asked to describe the acquisition strategy, Zuckerberg weighed each piece. Instagram, he said, has grown tenfold since they bought it and now has more than 200 million users. WhatsApp is on its way to one billion users. And Oculus could be the future of computing, the next mobile.

"The key thing to keep in mind is these are all incredibly rare companies," he said. 

Here are a few other samples of the rapidly brewing backlash against the deal:

Yesterday if you told me Facebook was going to buy Oculus I would have laughed. Now I'm not laughing. Now I am sad. — Dan Hammill (@Greenskull) March 25, 2014

Oculus blog comments sample: Epic betrayal. Don't do this to us. You might as well go full-evil. You sold out. http://t.co/xum0S2Ztu5— mhelft (@mhelft) March 25, 2014

Summary of my timeline: VC's patting themselves on the back over #Oculus. People who actually bought one lighting theirs on fire.— Robert McLaws (@robertmclaws) March 25, 2014

You know, having helped fund Oculus' Kickstarter, I have to admit I feel a little like Val Kilmer in Real Genius right about now.— Glenn White (@justicar) March 25, 2014

Not too sure if I feel like supporting the Oculus Rift now that facebook own the company— Alex (@PauseUnpauses) March 25, 2014

To all those who bought an Oculus Rift devkit - remember they go in the green wheelie bin. Blue is for recyclables.— Rab Florence (@robertflorence) March 25, 2014

Pwnmeal Extreme Gaming Oatmeal goes way beyond steel cut. This hot, lumpy cereal is EXTREME!!!

Alas, the caffeinated glop won't be coming to breakfast aisles anytime soon. The "official porridge of e-sports," launched at last weekend's Pax East conference in Boston, is a satire of gamer marketing and culture cooked up by Digital Kitchen and the jokers at Cards Against Humanity, the party game for horrible people.

"The concept may sound ridiculous, but it's not far off from the realities at these conventions," the agency says. "Gamers are hit with marketing for everything from caffeinated gum to beef jerky."

From the faux brand's website:"It's a PWN or BE PWN'd world out there. Only a n00b would skip breakfast, the most important meal of the day. When you visit cyberspace to play your favorite shoot 'em ups or massively multiplayer online video games, ensure decisive victory."

Flavors include Strawberries and Carnage ("Prepped to fuel your next kill streak with a massive payload of phytonutrients") and No Scope Headshot Blueberry ("Line it up and pull the trigger with a sweet, warm BFG—the B is for blueberry").

The video shows buff guys and gals "dramatically" tearing open product packets, tossing around flakes and rubbing oatmeal on their ripped bodies. They roar, and goopy goodness gushes from their mealy mouths. I prefer to start my grueling day like a real hard-core gamer—by dragging my saggy ass out of bed, pounding a few Hershey's Kisses and cursing my wasted life.

Blake Jamieson is trying to digitally play his way into women’s hearts, and it might actually be working. The aspiring content marketer applied a little branding to his profile on Tinder, the hot-or-not-style dating app, and said he's now matched with more than 2,000 women.

Some might call his e-dating tactics a form of spam and others might even call them false advertising, but Jamieson says he's simply found a playful way to increase his odds on the app, which at its most basic level is a game.

Tinder users, on their smartphone touchscreens, swipe right on profiles and photos they like and swipe left if they don't. And then matches can begin texting each other. Jamieson, 29, found some interesting dating insights. For instance, only 8 percent of women made the first move, until he made some adjustments to his profile and raised that rate to 18 percent. Jamieson shared his story with Adweek today, detailing how he adjusted his personal branding on the app to increase his love appeal.

What Jamieson learned could be a valuable lesson for content and social media marketers looking to engage with fans—and spark conversations—on new platforms. In his experiment, Jamieson made his profile look as if Tinder had endorsed him with an authentic-seeming logo and "Match of the Day" written on it.

"I hoped it would add more trust and credibility, which would result in more matches," Jamieson wrote in his initial recap on the blogging site Medium.

He said the tactic may have exploited the system, but didn't think it misled women, many of whom recognized that it was a joke, he said. Jamieson is a social media marketer for a pool supply company and lives in Phoenix.

He called his Tinder tests a "win for native advertising," boosting his reach by creating a profile that captured the look and feel of the app. Tinder has experimented with native ads; last year it ran dating profiles of characters in the Fox show The Mindy Project.

Here's how Jamieson made thousands of matches and the real-life results. And oh yeah, he has not been banned by Tinder, he told Adweek:

• He first used a "Match of the Day" logo starting in March, leading to 800 matches. He also swiped right, liking, every profile in every age group—18 and over—within a 100-mile radius, the maximum. That alone increases the chances of matching.
• He also added quirky messages to his six profile photos in the spirit of Tinder, such as: "But those dimples tho;" "He is taller than you;" and "Swipe right."
• After the first 800 matches, Jamieson refined his approach, leading to more than 2,000 matches. He increased the first-response rate from 8 percent to 18 percent of matches who texted him first.
• So how did he increase women who contacted him by 125 percent? He redesigned his fake Match of the Day logo and updated his bio. He borrowed a redesign from a friend of his, CamMi Pham, who used a banner at the top of the profile photo that now reads "Hot Match of the Day." In the original attempt, he used the Tinder flame logo to frame his face in the profile photo and mask everything outside the logo in black and white. He said the new look felt more native to Tinder.
• Jamieson said that updating his profile photo put him back in the pool of singles who swiped him off the first time around, giving him a second chance. Tinder has since said that is not a feature of the service, and changing a profile does not mean it will be seen again by people who already rejected it once.
• His new bio also now says: "And yes I really am your 'hot match of the day.' It’s a new feature." He called that addition "a little humor," but some might call it misleading. "Sure it might have annoyed some people, but everyone that took the time to message me congratulated me for being clever," he said.
• In his old profile, he included a link to his Medium page to boost clicks. In the updated bio, he said the call to action, rather than a click, was to encourage replies. So he posted a question: "If I said, 'I like your style,' What would you say? (There’s only one correct answer)." The correct answer: "I like your moves," from Starsky and Hutch.
• He also now includes Instagram and Snapchat contact info.
• Now, did any of this get him a real-life date? Yes, he set up five dates, and one led to a second and third date.