Facebook, one of the most popular social media networks has once again turned up to captivate us with it’s unique idea. According to an article published in The New York Times, Facebook chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg himself has announced that they are aiming to merge three messaging applications – WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger. The idea behind is to allow the user to chat with, for instance, an Instagram user while he is on Whatsapp without having to switch between the platforms.
Mark Zuckerberg is on attempt to integrate the underlying infrastructure of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger and enable end-to-end encryption (E2E) to provide more secure platform for all the three applications. When a Facebook user attempts to communicate with his Instagram friend, the messages are encrypted and then sent. These messages are communicated by connecting the backend of these platforms. However, these three apps will remain standalone.
“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.”, said a Facebook representative. With that being the case, data privacy would be a prime concern in Whatsapp as the users don’t reveal their personal information except their name and phone number. The merging might force the users to do so.
With over 1 billion users on Instagram and 1.5 billions users on Whatsapp, the growth rate has been increasing exponentially and would continue to do so. No wonder Mark Zuckerberg would come up with such an idea after acquiring Instagram and Whatsapp for $1 billion and $19.3 billion respectively.
