Facebook to merge Messenger with Instagram and WhatsApp in ‘early 2020’

Facebook is planning to allow cross-messaging between users on Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram.

A report by The New York Times claims that the Facebook-owned apps will share the same messaging service, but will continue to function independently.

The move allows people who use just one of the apps to communicate with users of the others, the newspaper says. That isn’t possible at the moment.

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For instance, someone who uses Instagram but deletes the WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger apps from their phone can still contact people using those services.

Facebook also plans to bring end-to-end encryption to all its services, making it far more difficult for hackers to spy on conversations, says Apple news site 9to5Mac.

There’s “no doubt” that Facebook is aiming to “keep its users more engaged” and develop a “primary messaging service”, The Verge notes.

Not only would merging the messaging services of all three platforms improve convenience, but it would also give the company a footing to “tout higher user engagement to advertisers” at a time when the firm’s “growth has slowed down”, the tech news site says.

A Facebook spokesperson told the New York Times that the company wanted to “build the best messaging experiences we can; and people want messaging to be fast, simple, reliable and private.

“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”, they added.

Facebook has yet to confirm when the move will happen, but the newspaper’s sources claim the merge is planned to take place in “early 2020”.