Technology giant Facebook has announced plans to integrate WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger.
The aim of the merger is to create “The Best Standard Messaging Experiences” for the billions of users worldwide who make use of Facebook-owned applications.
The applications will retain its distinct features meaning WhatsApp will remain WhatsApp and same for the rest, although the underlying messaging infrastructure would be unified, according to Facebook insiders.
Each service will continue to operate as a standalone app, but according to the report announced, Facebook is rebuilding the underlying infrastructure so that people who might use only one of Facebook’s assets could interact with others within the company’s environment. All of the applications i.e. Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram will support end-to-end encryption as well. Facebook has not officially announced when this Merger System will be released.
“We want to build the best messaging experiences we can; and people want messaging to be fast, simple, reliable and private,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. “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. As you would expect, there is a lot of discussion and debate as we begin the long process of figuring out all the details of how this will work.”
By allowing these messaging applications to communicate to one another across platforms, Facebook is certainly expecting that it will keep its users more engrossed and get them to use this merged system as their primary messaging service. In doing this, the company could also pitch higher user engagement to advertisers, bumping up its advertising length at a time when growth has derailed.
Facebook is the most used social medium platform in the world, and by combining its values this way, the company could more directly contend with Apple’s iMessage and Google’s messaging services.
Source: Independent