If you made an account on WhatsApp this year i.e. post January 1, you must have been welcomed by a banner that reads - WhatsApp from Facebook. The banner has been added for all the users who have registered on WhatsApp in the New Year.
The new banner was spotted by WhatsApp tipster WABetaInfo. "WhatsApp from Facebook is added to the WhatsApp Status for newly registered users!" posted the website.
The new banner was spotted by WhatsApp tipster WABetaInfo. "WhatsApp from Facebook is added to the WhatsApp Status for newly registered users!" posted the website.
The banner comes as part of Facebook's plans to monetise and make all its apps - WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram - one unified experience for billions of users. The plan was unveiled by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg who announced that the company aims to integrate its chat services - WhatsApp, Messenger and photo-sharing app Instagram - to let their users message each other across platforms.
Calling it a long-term project, Zuckerberg said the cross-app functionality will happen in 2020 or beyond.
However, last year in September, the platform had added a feature for Android users to let them share their status stories directly on Facebook Story and other apps. WhatsApp`s status stories let users post images, text and videos on their profile that disappear after 24 hours.
Zuckerberg had also said that he was concerned about data encryption and thus pushed for the integration between the apps.
"The first reason that I'm excited about this is moving more to end-to-end encryption by default in more of our products. People really like this in WhatsApp. I think it's the direction that we should be going in with more things in the future," he told analysts during a conference call.
