Facebook plans to
integrate its messaging services on Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger :
While all
three will remain stand-alone apps, at a much deeper level they will be linked
so messages can travel between the different services.
Facebook
told the BBC it was at the start of a "long process".
The plan was
first reported in the New York Times and is believed to be a personal project
of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Once
complete, the merger would mean that a Facebook user could communicate directly
with someone who only has a WhatsApp account. This is currently impossible as
the applications have no common core.
The work to
merge the three elements has already begun, reported the NYT, and
is expected to be completed by the end of 2019 or early next year.
Shared
data
Mr
Zuckerberg is reportedly pushing the integration plan to make its trinity of
services more useful and increase the amount of time people spend on them.
By
effectively joining all its users into one massive group Facebook could compete
more effectively with Google's messaging services and Apple's iMessage, suggested Makena Kelly on
tech news site The Verge.
"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," it added.
The statement said there was a lot of "discussion and
debate" about how the system would eventually work.
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