BBC
Facebook is looking to compete with the likes of Google and Apple with its newest plans. The social media company is considering integrating its messaging services on Instagram with WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. The three services will remain as standalone apps, but each will be linked in a way that will let messages travel between the services. Facebook is said to be at the start of what it considers a “long process.” If successful, this means a Facebook user can communicate directly with someone who has a WhatsApp or Instagram account. The timeline to complete this project is end of 2019 or early next year.
What Facebook can gain with this project is it’ll no longer need to develop competing versions of new features (like Stories) or allow businesses to reach more potential customers across the different platforms with its ability to share data easily. Facebook wants people to spend more time on its products, and this is one way they think that could happen. "We want to build the best messaging experiences we can; and people want messaging to be fast, simple, reliable and private," said Facebook 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." But this also raises a lot of questions, which Wired has detailed in this story.
Source: BBC