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Facebook plots Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram chat consolidation

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By John McCarthy, Opinion Editor

January 25, 2019 | 3 min read

Facebook has acknowledged that it is considering merging the chat app functionality of WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger into a single product.

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Facebook considering consolidation of Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram chat services

While the company boasts more than one billion users apiece on each app, it is looking to streamline its offering and help to cross-pollinate users through its app ecosystem by 2020.

A statement delivered to the New York Times confirmed rumours that the social media giant is looking to consolidate the three chat apps into a single service that is integrated within the existing infrastructure. It would allow cross-app messaging.

It said: “[We want 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.”

Facebook Messenger is looking to drive profits with ads. It is soon to launch in-stream ad videos, it is unclear whether these formats will be implemented across WhatsApp and the Instagram chat products too.

In 2018, Facebook Messenger vice-president of product Stan Chudnovsky told The Drum that he was looking to increasingly get the app on brand’s media plans but had to balance it off with not upsetting consumers, the ad product’s roll-out was as a result “very slow and deliberate”.

The Drum columnist Sam Scott said earlier this year explored all the issues that Facebook has to fix. These include financial, ethical, privacy and regulatory quandaries.

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