The second coming of Vine will have to wait while Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann figures out “funding and logistical hurdles,” The Verge reports. The announcement … is a disappointing but understanding turn of events,” it notes. “Back in January, Hofmann suggested the app may launch as soon as this summer, which was an ambitious timetable.”

Through market research, Facebook is reportedly trying to gauge consumer interest in an ad-free, subscription-based version of its service. “The company has studied such an option in the past, but now there’s more internal momentum to pursue it in light of Facebook’s recent privacy data scandal,” Bloomberg reports, citing sources. Yet, “The plans aren’t solid and may not go forward.”

Thanks to the support of the developer community, Amazon now says that Alexa has around 40,000 “skills.” Yet, “As enthusiastically as developers have embraced Alexa, a sizable percentage of that growth has been based on faith rather than an obvious and immediate opportunity to make money,” Fast Company notes.

While Cambridge Analytica may be closing its doors, parent company SCL Group have quietly created a new firm, Emerdata, which may eventually offer similar services as CA. “Cambridge and SCL officials privately raised the possibility that Emerdata could be used for a Blackwater-style rebranding of Cambridge Analytica and the SCL Group,” The New York Times writes. “One plan under consideration was to sell off the combined company’s data and intellectual property.”

Google Assistant can now “control” more than 5,000 smart devices, the search giant boasted this week. “It’s an increase from 1,500 compatible devices this January,” CNet notes, citing Google’s own estimates. “Tripling its smart home partners in a few months is quite the feat, especially since Google Assistant has been building up to that first number since the fall of 2016 when it launched.”

Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi filed for will likely be a massive IPO on Thursday. “It could raise about $10 billion in the largest listing globally in almost four years,” Reuters reports. “The listing is expected to give Beijing-based, Cayman-domiciled Xiaomi a market value of between $80 billion and $100 billion.”

Facebook has no plans to follow a cable model and pay media companies a yearly fee in exchange for their content. “I’m not sure that makes sense,” Mark Zuckerberg said this week, as reported by Recode. “People come to Facebook primarily not to consume news but to communicate with people.”

Google is quietly building a social-gaming startup led by ex-Facebook employee Michael Sayman, sources tell Bloomberg. “Google is secretly building a social-gaming startup, part of its effort to create fledgling companies within the internet-search giant,” it writes. The mobile unit is expected to begin releasing a trivia-style app something this summers.  

Spotify’s first quarterly earnings as a public company were less than amazing. “Spotify gave guidance for the current quarter that was slightly lighter than estimates,” CNBC writes. “Investors in young tech companies like Spotify tend to have an appetite for growth, and Spotify's could slow next quarter.”

Zynga chairman Mark Pincus just gave up voting control of the company. “The establishment of voting rights parity -- basically, one share, one vote -- rids the company of its longtime multi-class share structure that concentrated all power in the hands of one person,” Recode reports. “What that means is that Pincus’s 70 percent voting power over Zynga will convert into a 10 percent economic stake.”