Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is taking this week’s two-day marathon of testimony on Capitol Hill seriously — he’s even going to wear a suit and tie. Zuckerberg is scheduled to testify tomorrow before a joint Senate Judiciary and Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Facebook users’ social media privacy and the use of their personal data; he is also set to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday. Facebook has hired a team of experts to put Zuckerberg through a “crash course in humility and charm,” coaching him to “answer lawmakers’ questions directly, and not to appear overly defensive.” Some observers point out that Zuckerberg has in effect been on a 14-year apology tour, yet the company continues to violate users’ privacy, driven primarily by its business model. [Kevin Roose, Cecilia Kang and Sheera Frenkel / The New York Times]
Recode Daily: Mark Zuckerberg cleans up nice before testifying on Capitol Hill
Plus, Postmates and DoorDash have talked merger, Fortnite makes $2 million per day on iPhones, and meet “the Forrest Gump of bitcoin.”
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Postmates and DoorDash have discussed a merger to fend off better-funded restaurant-delivery competitors like Uber, GrubHub and Amazon. DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and Postmates CEO Bastian Lehmann have discussed a potential deal at least once in person in the last year; Postmates could face increased pressure to cut a deal in the wake of DoorDash’s recent giant cash infusion of $535 million from SoftBank’s Vision Fund. [Jason Del Rey / Recode]
Amazon has gone on a private-label rampage since early last year, releasing at least 60 of its own brands, predominantly in the clothing, shoes and jewelry category. With this rapid expansion, the online retail giant has silently delivered a message to retailers and brands that have shrugged off its earlier private-label launches as simply tactics that many retailers employ: “We’re going big.” [Jason Del Rey / Recode]
On-again, off-again billionaire and former hedge-fund manager Michael Novogratz calls himself “the Forrest Gump of bitcoin.” After enduring cycles of spectacular success and failure, first as a partner at Goldman Sachs and later at Fortress Investments, Novogratz invested $7 million of his own money in bitcoin and other cryptocurrency-rated investments when bitcoin was selling at less than $100 a coin. With a single coin now selling for more than 60 times that amount, Novogratz cites his luck at being in the right place at the right time. [Gary Shteyngart / The New Yorker]
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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
