The chief executive at Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has announced his plans of integrating the three messaging services: Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram. But what does this mean and when will it happen?
According to the New York Times, this move is part of Zuckerberg’s project of refreshing the fortune brought by Facebook, which has been in quite the privacy scandal until now.
The effort of unifying the three services under the same infrastructure was described by four unnamed people that are involved in the project. They explained that this would take a lot of effort, as it means reconfiguring even the most basic parts of each app. Also, they explain that Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram will be operating as stand-alone apps. The work is still in the early stages and should be completed by the end of this year or at the beginning of 2020.
Zuckerberg is no longer opposed by the WhatsApp and Instagram’s founders since they both have recently departed.
The Integration to Improve Privacy, and Make it Easier to Reach Friends or Family Across Different Platforms
Facebook also reported that it would add the end-to-end encryption from WhatsApp to all three platforms, stating in the interview with the Times that its goal is to “build the best messaging experiences we can; and people want messaging to be fast, simple, reliable and private. We’re working on making more of our messaging products end-to-end encrypted and considering ways to make it easier to reach friends and family across networks.”
This decision of privacy comes after Apple CEO Tim Cook urged the need of adding industry-wide regulations.
New York Times’ Mike Isaac wrote that as soon as the apps’ infrastructure is unified, a “Facebook user could send an encrypted message to someone who has only a WhatsApp account, for example. Currently, that isn’t possible because the apps are separate.”
Facebook also stated that they would have to spend a lot of time discussing and debating, as they start “the long process of figuring out all the details of how this will work.”
Agnes is a technical writer, being in touch with reports to come up with the latest tech leaks.
