Re/wind: President Obama Gets Behind Net Neutrality, Twitter Goes to Wall Street and More

Hello there!

Here’s the news that powered Re/code this week:

1. On Monday morning, President Obama announced his support for the FCC to regulate broadband Internet like it does phone networks when the agency writes its new net neutrality rules. Here’s a guide to help you figure out what this all means, and you can bookmark it for later as you’ll have some time to bone up on the issue before the FCC unveils its next net neutrality proposal in 2015. The backlash from telecom companies has already begun; Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said Obama’s announcement creates “uncertainty” that stifles innovation, and it looks like there’s a fight brewing between AT&T and the FCC.
2. Twitter held its first Analyst Day on Wednesday, a year since the company’s initial public offering. Walking up to the event, we asked how Twitter planned to address critical questions on the company’s management struggles and long-term business outlook. On the call, CEO Dick Costolo and CFO Anthony Noto reiterated that the market underestimates the size of Twitter, and that they have some new products coming in the near future. Also, Twitter put out a poorly worded mission statement-thing that everyone made fun of.
3. Though you’ve probably heard about YouTube or Instagram celebrities, the stars of Pinterest — Pinfluencers, if you will — are trying to turn their own cults of personality into profits. Read about how talent agent Kyla Brennan makes that happen.
4. Mitchell Baker, executive chairwoman of the Mozilla Foundation, wants you to know that the Internet is becoming a more centralized place and how, frankly, that sucks.
5. Facebook won. It got everyone to download its frustrating messaging app after it split its mobile app in two. Facebook Messenger now has 500 million monthly users. Also the social media giant is tinkering with its privacy policies to make it easier for you to opt out of some locational ad stuff (which likely won’t matter because we’ve all come to accept that Facebook is gonna sell our data anyway).
6. Amazon and book publisher Hachette finally reached an agreement on e-book pricing, on terms that appeared to satisfy both companies. The fight is probably not over. In other news, Amazon is offering a free 30-day Kindle trial in anticipation of the holiday season, and its cloud computing chief played down talk of competitors encroaching on its turf.
7. Yahoo doubled down on its adtech business this week, with the announcement that it had acquired the video advertising startup, BrightRoll, for $640 million. At the end of last week, Yahoo exec Amit Kumar disclosed that he would be leaving the company.
8. It’s been a billion dollar kind of week for Alibaba. During a 24-hour period earlier this week, the Chinese e-commerce company sold over $9 billion of merchandise, blowing away American Black Friday shopping numbers. On Thursday, the recently IPO’d company said it would be looking raise up to $8 billion in a bond offering.
9. Talk shit about your coworkers with the anonymous gossip app, Canary. Not recommended for small businesses.
10. For one glorious day, there weren’t any ads working on a lot of websites. This was because Google’s ad server went down for a period of time on Wednesday, briefly freeing us from the yoke of materialist consumerism.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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