It seems that Facebook is trying to unify all three of its messaging services i.e, WhatsApp and Instagram and Facebook Messenger. This has apparently been Zuckerberg’s plan since January last year.

However, reports had been coming out to suggest that an injunction had been planned by the U.S. government against Facebook’s interoperability rules. This would be seen as the main cause for the delay. Nevertheless, the company has now had the green light to merge Instagram and Messenger chats.

A recent report from The Verge stated that several Instagram users had started to notice a new update pop-up on the app. With it came a message saying “there’s a New Way to Message on Instagram” and a list of features including a “new colourful look for your chats,” additional emoji reactions, swipe-to-reply, and a feature that will allow users to “Chat with friends who use Facebook.”

Start off your week with tech news recap and trending conversations in your inbox

Enter valid email-id

Subscribe

I prefer it on Telegram

Image courtesy XDA Developers

At the moment, it is still not clear when Facebook will allow Instagram users to contact people on Facebook. But we should be expecting the feature to fully roll out soon since the company has already announced it.

Image courtesy XDA Developers

It is also worth noting that Facebook is also reportedly planning to incorporate end-to-end encryption on all three apps. Hopefully, users of these apps won’t have to be worried about security issues any more. But then again, Facebook still has a long way to go when privacy is concerned. None of that has been confirmed yet so we should probably take it with a pinch of salt.