Facebook finally had a good day. Mark Zuckerberg’s first-quarter earnings report beat Wall Street estimates, and his company showed no signs of impact from the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Investors liked what they saw — Facebook stock was up almost 7 percent in after-hours trading. [Kurt Wagner and Rani Molla / Recode]
Recode Daily: Happy days again for Facebook and Twitter
Plus, Amazon is launching an Alexa device for kids that teaches them to say “please”; Sonos is filing confidentially for an IPO; and Facebook and Microsoft join Apple in redesigning their gun emojis.
Daniel Leal-Olivas / AFP / Getty Images
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Now that it’s making money, Twitter is going to start hiring again after a few years of shrinking headcount. Twitter said it plans to grow its workforce 10 percent to 15 percent this year; it could reach 3,800 employees at the end of this year, the most it’s had since fall 2016. [Kurt Wagner and Rani Molla / Recode]
Amazon is releasing a just-for-kids edition of its Alexa-powered Echo Dot — and it encourages kids to say “please.” The $80 Echo Dot Kids Edition will begin shipping on May 9; Amazon is also releasing a free software upgrade for existing units. Meanwhile, YouTube expanded opt-in YouTube Kids controls for parents, including locking down content to show only channels reviewed by humans. [Jason Del Rey / Recode]
Wireless speaker company Sonos could go public this summer. The company held an analyst day at its offices in Santa Barbara this week, in which senior executives outlined Sonos’ financials and walked through details of the business. Sonos would likely look to raise several hundred million dollars in proceeds from the IPO, and would have a market value of about $2.5 billion to $3 billion. [Maureen Farrell / The Wall Street Journal]
Gmail launched its first major update in years, with a refreshed user interface, “confidential” mode, a behind-the-scenes security redesign, hover actions, email snoozing and a collapsible right-side panel. [Vlad Savov / The Verge]
Recode presents ...
Do you have questions about the proposed AT&T-Time Warner merger? What about the Trump administration’s lawsuit to block it? Send them in to TooEmbarrassed@recode.net or tweet them with #TooEmbarrassed. Recode’s Kara Swisher and Edmund Lee will be talking all about the merger on this week’s show.
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This is cool
Facebook and Microsoft are redesigning their gun emojis, catching up with a controversial change that Apple made in 2016 — basically, it turns the representation of a gun from a weapon into a toy.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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