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Facebook Messenger and Instagram merged, more than 18 months after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced his intention to integrate the two platforms.
The old Instagram direct messaging service, Instagram Direct, has been replaced by Messenger, allowing users to send chats, photos, and videos between the two platforms for the first time.
It is the first step towards a goal announced in March 2019 of merging not only those two platforms, but also incorporating WhatsApp and enabling end-to-end encryption for all messages sent between the three applications.
“We are connecting the Messenger and Instagram experience to bring some of the best Messenger features to Instagram,” said Adam Mosseri and Stan Chudnovsky of Facebook, the heads of Instagram and Messenger respectively, in a statement. “People on Instagram can decide whether to immediately upgrade to this new experience.”
Executives write: “In our research, four out of five people who use messaging apps in the US say that spending more time connecting with friends and family on these apps is important to them, yet one in three People sometimes have a hard time remembering where to find a certain thread. With this update, it will be even easier to stay connected without thinking about which app to use to communicate with your friends and family. “
The integration of the two apps requires specific user consent to allow their accounts to be merged, so Facebook offers new features like a carrot to encourage adoption. If they accept the update, users will be able to send “selfie stickers”, watch Instagram videos with friends during video calls, and send disappearing messages.
Facebook said the new features will be rolled out in “some countries” immediately and “soon globally.”
There is also no timetable for the more controversial plans announced in Zuckerberg’s March 2019 blog post: the integration of WhatsApp with Facebook Messenger and Instagram, and the decision to turn on end-to-end encryption for all conversations in all three. platforms.
“We are still determining how inter-app communications with WhatsApp will work,” a Facebook spokesperson said. “WhatsApp will remain a separate end-to-end encrypted application at this time.”
The initial announcement was widely criticized as a perceived attempt to proactively protect Facebook from antitrust enforcement that could have forced WhatsApp or Instagram to split into separate companies. Zuckerberg argued that it was a necessary change at the very heart of the company.
“If we do this right, we can create private sharing platforms that could be even more important to people than the platforms we’ve already built to help people share and connect more openly,” he wrote.
