Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Plans to Integrate WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to integrate the social network’s messaging services — WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger — asserting his control over the company’s sprawling divisions at a time when its business has been battered by scandals. The move requires thousands of Facebook employees to reconfigure how WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger function at their most basic levels. Zuckerberg has also ordered all of the apps to incorporate end-to-end encryption, a significant step that protects messages from being viewed by anyone except the participants in the conversation. The changes may raise questions of data privacy because of how user information may be shared between the services. Today, WhatsApp requires people to register only a phone number to sign up for the service. By contrast, Facebook and Facebook Messenger ask users to provide their real identities. Matching Facebook and Instagram users to their WhatsApp handles could give pause to those who prefer keeping their use of each app compartmentalized.