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.

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.

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.