Amazon is looking for a city to build a second HQ, and its unorthodox search process seems to be working. The Seattle-based company received more than 200 proposals from cities and regions across the U.S. and Canada. Stonecrest, Ga., even offered to change its name to Amazon if it wins. Meanwhile, the company is shutting down its five-year-old Amazon Wine marketplace in the wake of its acquisition of Whole Foods. [Jason Del Rey / Recode]
Recode Daily: More than 200 cities are competing to win Amazon’s second headquarters
Plus, Publishers are spooked by Facebook’s content-surfacing tests, bike-sharing is the new ride-sharing, and the Oakland A’s come through for a 9-year-old fan.
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Facebook may make it harder for users to see publishers’ stories unless publishers pay to promote them. Moving content from the News Feed to the harder-to-find new Explore Feed is scary for most publishers. But this wouldn’t be the first time Facebook has changed the rules on its platform. And for now, Facebook says this is a test, not a plan. [Kurt Wagner / Recode]
YouTube’s role in last year’s election is under scrutiny. The New York Times shows how RT, Russia’s English-language cable channel, used the video platform to increase the reach of the Kremlin’s “principal international propaganda outlet”; the Wall Street Journal has its own take. [Daisuke Wakabayashi / New York Times]
Bike-sharing has become the new battleground for urban transportation. After seeing success in China and Europe, “dockless” bike-sharing is expanding aggressively in the U.S.; the rental bikes are locked and unlocked by scanning a QR code with an app. Here’s how the system works, where it’s happening and a look at the incumbents and the new players. [Johana Bhuiyan and Rani Molla / Recode]
Snap vastly overestimated consumer demand for its intentionally goofy-looking Spectacles — the company’s much-hyped first hardware product — and now has hundreds of thousands of unsold camera-equipped sunglasses sitting in warehouses. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel recently said that in the year since launch, Spectacles sales had exceeded expectations, topping 150,000. [Will Oremus / Slate]
Top stories from Recode
When you’re trying to close an $86 billion deal, you can take your time.
Meet Wibbitz, one of the software startups that helps publishers make lots of videos very, very quickly.
A majority of HBO Now and Hulu subscribers pay for Netflix.
“This is an apple. Some people might try and tell you that it’s a banana.”
This is cool
A 9-year-old Oakland A’s fan lost his treasured collection of A’s baseball cards when his family’s home burned down in the recent Northern California wildfires. On the suggestion of his aunt, Loren Smith wrote the team and told them what happened: “I had every single A’s card from 2000 to now ... and it all burned up. So sad.” The A’s — along with other teams and fans — answered in person. [CBS News]
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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