Facebook Plans to Integrate With WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger – Reports

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – Facebook plans to complete a technical integration with smaller platforms the company owns – WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger - by the year 2020 and also hopes to offer customers end-to-end encryption, the New York Times said on Friday.
Sputnik

While all three services will continue operating as stand-alone apps, their underlying messaging infrastructure will be unified, the media reported citing four unnamed sources involved in the effort.

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In addition, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has ordered all of the apps to incorporate end-to-end encryption — a significant step that protects messages from being viewed by anyone except the participants in the conversation, the report said.

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Facebook developed its own messenger app, and knitting together the company's apps is a stark reversal of Zuckerberg’s promise of a high degree of autonomy when purchasing the independent companies WhatsApp and Instagram. 

For Facebook, the changes provide a better chance of making money from Instagram and WhatsApp, which currently generate little revenue, even though they have vast numbers of users, according to the report. Instagram has 1 billion monthly active users, while WhatsApp has 1.5 billion.

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