Got an interesting opening headline for today’s Sunday Rundown #37. And we got some news about new options for Messenger and Instagram.

Parent-teacher meeting at the Silicon Valey

On Monday at noon ET, one of the more notable Congressional hearings in Silicon Valley history will take place. In detail, he 15-member House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee will ask questions of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. The event is what is known as an evidentiary hearing. Namely, members of Congress are gathering evidence as part of a 13-month investigation into the competition and digital marketplaces.

A weird thing about the hearing is that while Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google share some broad characteristics, they are also very different companies. As a result, the outcome could be legislation that seeks to rein in the market power of these giants. Hence, limiting their ability to create monopolies.

New security options for Messenger

Facebook is now rolling out Touch ID and Face ID lock options for Messenger on iOS. This will stop people from snooping on your Messenger chats. Once enabled, you can choose how long it takes before your Messenger needs to be unlocked again with Face/Touch ID. The option will be available for Android in the near future.

Instagram Adds New ‘Shop’ Tab in Explore

Instagram is rolling out the next stage of its on-platform shopping experience with the addition of a new ‘Shop’ section in Explore that will showcase a range of buyable items within a single feed. The new Shop listings will highlight personalized product recommendations for each user, based on the accounts they follow and the businesses that are using Instagram’s product listings.

That could make it worth all retailers considering their Instagram shop options. If you are looking to get your products featured within this new listing, approved businesses can tag products in their Instagram posts, which will then help them reach interested users via Instagram’s recommendations algorithm

Bonus links

Thanks for taking the time to read our Sunday Rundown #37. If you have a story that you want to see in this series, reply to us below or contact us