TL;DR – How does this work?
I suppose we all know by now that social media giant Facebook, also owns messaging app WhatsApp and photo (and video) -sharing network Instagram.
In a landmark move, the company has announced that it intends to integrate all three platforms.
This will be a “long process” but eventually, while all three will remain stand-alone apps, at a much deeper level they will be linked so messages can travel between the different services.
It is believed that this is a personal project of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Once completed, a Facebook user could communicate directly with someone who only has a WhatsApp account. Cross-platform messaging may also change the way businesses on one platform communicate with their customers.
More importantly, this will probably make the key parts of Facebook’s empire more difficult to break up and spin off. You can read this BBC article that examines the sharing of data between the platforms in greater detail.
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