Just this Friday, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zukerberg has announced that he is making plans to allow users from all of these social-networking services to message each other across the different platforms.
The plan has been initiated and is currently in its early stages but the target for when all the services are to be linked up is by early 2020. Now this means that these independently-run companies, which are also owned by Facebook, are now being pushed to become a part of the Facebook ecosystem.
The Good News
This plan can leave some good news for all of these users. Now those who refuse to make an account on the other services (possibly they don’t like the features of the other apps) can message those on the other services, without having to make another account. This can also mean that those who have opened an account for the sole reason to message those who don’t have an account on their preferred service can close or deactivate that account now. Who doesn’t like not having to remember another password?
The Bad News
Facebook has had many incidents in recent years where they have been exposed for selling and tracking private user information. And now Facebook is dipping its fingers into the companies who they had let run fine independently. This can probably lead to (hopefully not) another privacy scandal where Instagram and WhatsApp have their user information sold since Facebook is going to start managing the user to user messaging across all platforms.
While Facebook’s integrity is not fully gained back, I feel like this may be a good move for all users. If Facebook learns from its previous mistakes and learns to keep its user’s privacy secured, it will succeed with this transition and its trustworthiness can be reestablished. Even then, lots of apps have had aspirations of being able to interact with each other and since Facebook is making plans for this, it may lead to others following suit.
Tech Byte 