A report by The New York Times has indicated that Mark Zuckerberg is planning to integrate Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The integration of all the Facebook-owned services will lead to the creation of a large ecosystem where users can interact with each other through any of the services.
The report says that each app will continue to operate individually but with the underlying merging of apps, users won’t have to leave an app to interact with the users on the other app. For example, users would be able to send a message to someone on WhatsApp from the Messenger app. End to end encryption will also be deployed in all the apps.
According to a Facebook spokesperson, “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 integrating all the apps, Facebook wants to develop a large ecosystem for users for seamless messaging and increase engagement.
This could be a revival strategy to gain back the trust of users after multiple data breaches that rocked Facebook in 2018. However, on the dark side, it would also mean that Facebook would be able to fetch more data from users and use targeted advertisements in its walled garden of the services.
What do you think about Zuckerberg’s plan to merge the functionalities of Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp? Tell us in the comments.
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