Up to four different anonymous sources indicate in The New York Times that Mark Zuckerberg is preparing the structural integration of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger into a single messaging service.
According to this information, the services will continue to operate independently, but they will all share the same unified infrastructure and will have, for example, end-to-end encryption. This deployment would be ready by the end of this year or early 2020.
More interconnected services than ever
The integration would allow connecting these applications even when they are separated: a Facebook Messenger user could send a message to a WhatsApp user without having an account in this service, something that is impossible with the current infrastructure.
The idea of this approach according to the sources cited by the NYT is to ensure that users do not leave the ecosystem of Facebook services to avoid competition from rivals with Apple and Google. “If users interact more frequently with Facebook applications, the company can boost its advertising business or add new services to generate revenue,” [these sources] commented.
A statement from Facebook seems to confirm these intentions, since in the message to the newspaper its spokespersons indicated that they want to “work on making more of our messaging products encrypted end-to-end, and we are considering ways to make it easier to reach friends and family between different networks.”
This new plan contrasts with the initial intentions of Mark Zuckerberg when he acquired Instagram or WhatsApp. Then he indicated that they would have full autonomy, but it seems that the explosive growth of both services have made the creator and CEO of Facebook change his mind and want to take advantage of that dimension to interconnect his messaging services.
It may be that those intentions were part of the reason why Zuckerberg ended up clashing with the founders of WhatsApp, Brian Acton and Jan Koum, and also with those of Instagram, who left the company last fall due to alleged lack of independence.
