It’s not a secret that today’s modern world is rushing forward with high speed with all sorts of developments to a variety of software programs, intriguing flagships of already existing smartphones and other major drastic improvements in social media applications.
Many updates of popular applications such as Facebook, Whatsapp Instagram and Viber have been rolling in the past few years. Facebook revamped its messaging section, launching an application originally named ‘Facebook Chat’ in 2008 and later released standalone apps for Android and iOS in 2011, which are used side by side with the actual Facebook app. Whatsapp introduced the read receipts feature in 2014 in the form of ‘blue colored’ ticks indicating the messages had been read by the recipient. Instagram also introduced its latest feature last year showing when users were last active on the messaging section. Viber also introduced the feature of marking messages as unread by long tapping on it in October 2018.
What recently managed to grab the public’s attention was Mark Zuckerberg’s unexpected plan of merging the three main messengers: Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram.
No thanks.
‘Facebook to integrate WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger’
— Susanna Reid (@susannareid100) January 25, 2019
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, is the one behind the merging plan. The three messengers will still remain as stand-alone apps with just their infrastructure being unified, along with the 2.6 billion users of the three apps being able to communicate across the platforms, according to the four people who were involved in the talk and effort of this plan. The plan contradicts Zuckerberg’s vow to leave the platforms alone, fortunate for a few and unfortunate for the majority who resist further upcoming changes as a result of this integration.
Because I communicate differently on different apps. Most people I know do. It’s called preference.
— Nikita Gill (@nktgill) January 25, 2019
Preference. Whether the new features that will roll out will be beneficial or not, not many people prefer new changes — especially when it is related to social media applications where one is more worried about their image and how they showcase themselves in terms of interacting with either everyone or just a selected few. Zuckerberg has ordered that all apps incorporate end-to-end encryption, protecting messages from being viewed by anyone except the sender and receiver. Furthermore, by knitting all these applications together, he believes Facebook’s utility will increase, keeping users more engaged in the company’s ecosystem. Zuckerberg’s goal is to complete the merge by the end of the year. This requires Facebook employees to reconfigure how Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram messenger function at their basic level, according to the four anonymous people.
As you would expect, there’s a lot of discussion and debate as we begin the long process of figuring out all the details of how this will work – Facebook said in a statement.
This controversial plan of Zuckerberg’s has raised many questions from the general public regarding how the integration will affect the users, both in terms of privacy and publicity. Will Zuckerberg ever come to the decision to charge a fee? The plan of integrating the messengers into one whole unit has been discussed by four men who wanted to keep their identities undisclosed due to the matter being confidential, Could this be just another rumor? All we can do is patiently wait until the next new feature of the combined social media messengers roll out.
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