Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was the richest person on Earth — for just a few hours. The recent surge in Amazon stock briefly pushed Bezos’s net worth north of $90 billion, leapfrogging Bill Gates. But after Amazon reported a smaller-than-expected second-quarter profit, he dropped back to No. 2. The bigger deal is how Amazon is now spending more to hire sales staff for AWS and its budding advertising business.
[Jason Del Rey / Recode]
Recode Daily: Jeff Bezos was the world’s richest man — until Amazon reported slightly disappointing earnings
Plus, Facebook proposes a paywall to help publishers sell subscriptions, ideas for stopping sexual harassment in Silicon Valley, and play along during today’s conference call.
Facebook wants to help publishers sell subscriptions by creating a paywall, and it won’t take any revenue. After a 10-article limit, readers will be sent to the publisher’s site to sign up for a subscription. The company also says it won’t take any of the data involved in the transaction.
[Peter Kafka / Recode]
Twitter didn’t add any new users in Q2, a disappointing result that sent the stock down as much as 12 percent. Twitter said it’s more important to focus on its growth in daily active users, but it won’t actually tell us how many daily active users it has, so we came up with our best estimate: 157 million, less than Snapchat’s 166 million.
[Kurt Wagner / Recode]
A rare bipartisan bill that allows Ford, Google and Uber to more easily deploy self-driving cars inched ahead in Congress. The Safely Ensuring Lives Future Deployment and Research in Vehicle Evolution Act — let’s call it SELFDRIVE — would allow companies to road test as many as 100,000 highly autonomous vehicles.
[Tony Romm / Recode]
Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler is stepping down as CEO of the innovative crowdfunding company later this year. Founded in New York in 2009, Kickstarter facilitated more than $2 billion in pledges across myriad projects, including the now-defunct Pebble smartwatch.
[Paul Sawers / VentureBeat]
Recode presents ...
On the latest Too Embarrassed to Ask, Kara Swisher and Lauren Goode talk about potential solutions with Paradigm CEO Joelle Emerson — whose firm works with other companies in Silicon Valley to combat unconscious biases — and Evertoon CEO Niniane Wang, one of the three women who spoke out about harassment from venture capitalist Justin Caldbeck. [Eric Johnson / Recode]
Top stories from Recode
Meg Whitman says she will not be Uber CEO (again).
The high-profile tech exec tweeted her regrets about the car-hailing company’s top job.
BuzzFeed is selling a $149, Bluetooth-enabled hot plate.
Because it can. Also, because Tasty.
Watch the slightly bizarre trailer for Oculus’ first “full-length VR film.”
You, the viewer, are a character in the film.
Apple is retiring the iPod nano, a tiny gadget that made a huge impact.
It’s also putting the iPod shuffle to rest.
Let’s take a vacation from social media.
Various platforms — and Facebook especially — are, weirdly, both a kind of diary and a public performance.
This is cool
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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