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Facebook seeks WIDE EYES of sports fans to rival Twitter

Zuck to buy SportStream. Blink and you'll miss it ... bitch

Facebook is to acquire a San Francisco-based startup that sifts through mentions of sport on social media.

Financial details of the planned buyout of SportStream were kept secret.

The move is Facebook's latest attempt to compete for eyeballs with rival free content ad network Twitter.

It comes after the Mark Zuckerberg-run company implemented hashtags on its service in June to allow users to flag up posts as public on Facebook.

The hashtag neologism has, of course, been popularised by Twitter - which recently floated on Wall Street and, soon after, began serving cookie-based ads, much to the delight of investors.

Facebook said that it expected admen to make use of the tools and APIs SportStream will bring to its biz. The outfit is apparently good at getting right up to the creepy line - to paraphrase Google exec chairman Eric Schmidt.

Justin Osofsky, who is Facebooks's media partnerships veep, said in a blog post that the 18-month-old SportStream had "demonstrated a track record of surfacing interesting and engaging content".

SportStream will be folded into Facebook's own operations at Menlo Park, the company said. ®

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