Facebook Plans to Merge Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, recently announced plans to merge Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram. The three are the main messaging services in the Facebook “family of apps”. While the apps themselves will continue to operate as stand-alone apps, the core infrastructure will be integrated together.
According to a statement given to the New York Times, Facebook says the purpose of the integration is to “build the best messaging experiences we can; and people want messaging to be fast, simple, reliable and private.” They also plan to improve the security and privacy of all three services. Facebook’s goal is to complete the changes by the end of 2019 or early 2020.
How will this affect your marketing?
This change will be a major boost to your business marketing efforts, especially if you use chatbots for your business. Once this change takes place, you will be able to choose one platform to communicate with the customers on all three platforms. For instance, you could us a Messenger chatbot to communicate with customers using WhatsApp or Instagram.
This merger will also provide the opportunity to tag users on different platforms – something that’s not possible right now.
We see this as a positive change for small businesses – allowing an easier way to communicate with potential customers.
How do you see this change affecting your business?