Twitter signs multi-year deal with NFL

The National Football League (NFL) said it signed a multi-year

partnership with microblogging site Twitter Inc. to deliver video
and other content to NFL fans on a daily basis.
Content, including in game highlights from pre-season through
Super Bowl 50, will be distributed across Twitter from the start of
2015 season, the NFL said in a press release.
The partnership expands on the NFL’s existing partnership with
Twitter since 2013, and Twitter users will now have access to more
official NFL content than in the past.
Twitter’s shares rose 4 percent to $28.11 in early trading.

Facebook Is Going To Space To Bring Internet To Sub-

Saharan Africa
The social network is partnering with a French satellite provider as
part of its Internet.org project.

Facebook is teaming up with French satellite provider Eutelsat to

bring Internet access to sub-Saharan Africa, the latest effort by
the social network to bring the entire world online.

The project will use the AMOS-6 satellite, which is currently under
construction and slated to launch next year, to provide Internet
service to large parts of east, west and southern Africa. Facebook
and Eutelsat have a multiyear deal with Spacecom, the satellite's
manufacturer, to use its broadband capacity.

The collaboration is part of Facebook's Internet.org project, which

aims to deliver affordable Internet access to developing
countries.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the
partnership Monday, noting the company would work with local
partners in Africa to help connect people there to the satellite-
provided Internet.

"Connectivity changes lives and communities. We’re going to

keep working to connect the entire world -- even if that means
looking beyond our planet," Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post.
While the cost of providing Internet access has dropped
dramatically in recent years, much of the world is still offline.
According to a United Nations study released last month, 57
percent of the world's population does not use the Internet, and
just 35.3 percent of the developing world is currently online.
In sub-Saharan Africa, one in nine households currently have
broadband connectivity. And while smartphones are far from
ubiquitous in the region, their use is on the rise in many areas as
device prices go down.
Zuckerberg hopes his initiative will bring more households online
in the near future.

Since launching in 2013, Internet.org has spawned a number of

projects aimed at expanding access in communities where
connectivity is scarce. While Facebook has touted the project's
reach, Internet.org was also the subject of some controversy
earlier this year when human rights advocates accused it of
violating the spirit of net neutrality by providing free access to a
select group of websites and services. In May, Facebook
responded to the criticism by opening up the platform to third-
party developers, and later made it easier for more mobile
operators to provide the free service.