In what has bee reported to be a personal project by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook is planning to merge its three messaging platforms in order to allow cross communication between them. This means that users can send messages from their Instagram account to another users Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger.
According to initial reports emanating from The New York Times, this is just the start of a “long process”.
Currently, the applications have no common core and it is impossible for users to send messages across to each on the different platforms. The project is expected to be finalized at the end of 2019 or early 2020.
“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.
Facebook has already come under massive scrutiny from regulators regarding the way it shares and handles user data and this move may just increase the heat on the company.