FTC puts the brakes on Facebook's plans to merge messaging apps
Facebook is planning to merge WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger, bringing together more than 2.6 billion users so that they can communicate over the three platforms. The effort will require the social media giant to rewrite the basic software of the three apps so that they are interoperable.
The plan, which is in its early stages, would take thousands of Facebook employees about a year to complete. Messages would incorporate end-to-end encryption, ensuring that only the users participating in such conversations would see them. A new report suggests the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) might file an injunction against Facebook, to keep it from integrating its messaging apps together. Doing so might make it harder to break up the company - which the FTC is reportedly considering.
Sources say that the FTC could block Facebook from pursuing further “interoperability,” which is its word for the ways in which its platforms interact.
The word is that Facebook is trying to integrate its messaging services - Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram - with each other so that users don’t have to switch between apps when interacting with friends. Zuckerberg first mentioned this ambition in March when he outlined his vision for the future:
[Today] if you want to message people on Facebook you have to use Messenger, on Instagram you have to use Direct, and on WhatsApp you have to use WhatsApp. We want to give people a choice so they can reach their friends across these networks from whichever app they prefer. We plan to start by making it possible for you to send messages to your contacts using any of our services, and then to extend that interoperability to SMS too.
“If they’re maintaining separate business structures and infrastructure, it’s much easier to have a divestiture in that circumstance than in where they’re completely enmeshed and all the eggs are scrambled.”
FB moves to merge the chat app functionality of WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger into a single product, it's a move to the future of marketing, messaging apps. The move has the potential to redefine how billions of people use the apps to connect with one another and with brands.
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