After pushing back its IPO twice in the last couple years, the Japanese messaging service Line finally went public yesterday. Its share price popped around 26 percent to $41.58 a share, a positive sign for what's been an anemic tech IPO market over the last year. The next step for Line will be to figure out how to reverse its slowing user growth.
[Noah Kulwin | Recode]
Donald Trump was expected to announce Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate today, but has delayed the announcement, citing the terror attack in Nice, France. Because Trump is Trump, he was also suggesting on Thursday that he hadn't made up his mind about his pick anyway. If Trump does select Pence, it won't help his standing in Silicon Valley, which dislikes Pence's stances on just about everything.
[Dawn Chmielewski and Noah Kulwin | Recode]
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign and the Republican Party are scrambling to figure out both who will fund and be onstage at its convention later this month. Facebook says that board member Peter Thiel is speaking there on his own, in no official Facebook capacity whatsoever (which is what they said about his efforts to sue Gawker into oblivion). Tim Tebow, who was reportedly going to speak, denied in a Facebook video that he would be onstage.
[Kara Swisher | Recode]
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter published yesterday, Apple media exec Eddy Cue said that he doesn't love the skinny cable bundle. What's weird is that Apple has spent years pushing for exactly that — a slimmed-down, cheaper offering of a cable package that it could sell over its own Apple TV platform. What Cue really meant is that because the TV companies currently don't want to sell off their best channels individually, the company's strategy (for now) is to push TV apps like Netflix or Sling.
[Peter Kafka | Recode]
