THE NEWS WRAP: Ad-free subscriptions on the agenda for YouTube

YouTube is considering offering paid ad-free subscriptions, according to chief executive officer Susan Wojcicki.

The company is in the early stages of exploring new subscription services, Wojcicki told Re/code at the Code/Mobile conference overnight.

“YouTube right now is ad-supported, which is great because it has enabled us to scale to a billion users; but there are going to be cases where people are going to say, ‘I don’t want to see the ads, or I want to have a different experience’,” she says.

Google X is developing an early disease detection system

Google’s research arm, famous for taking ‘moon shots’ and running some of the most ambitious projects in the technology industry, is creating a system for early detection of disease, Wired reports.

The system involves ingesting specially “painted” nanoparticles that target various molecular signs of disorder. When they detect such signs of disease they send out signals that will be picked up by wristbands. The early alerts mean potentially deadly ailments could be caught and treated sooner.

Facebook beats earning projections, user growth slows

Social media giant Facebook released its financial results and for the ninth quarter straight it beat earning projections.

Facebook earned $US3.203 billion ($A3.62 billion) in revenue with earnings per share of $US0.43. Total user count grew 2.27% to 1.35 billion monthly users, slower than its 3.125% user growth in the previous quarter.

Mobile advertising revenue accounted for 66% of advertising revenue, up from 49% year-on-year.

Overnight

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 187.81 to 17,005.75. The Australian dollar is currently trading at US89 cents.