Facebook users will be able to send messages between messengers, Instagram and WhatsApp, Zuckerberg announces

Future of social networks is private messaging, CEO announces in wide-ranging new post

Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram users will now be able to send messages to each other, Mark Zuckerberg has announced.

The Facebook boss said it will introduce the vast overhaul of the way all of its messaging apps work as part of a move towards being a “privacy-focused platform”.

That will include upgrading its encryption and refusing to store data in countries with poor human rights records, he said, as well as rewriting how the various chat apps can talk to each other.

“People want to be able to choose which service they use to communicate with people,” he wrote as part of a long explanation of his vision of the future of social networks. ”However, today if you want to message people on Facebook you have to use Messenger, on Instagram you have to use Direct, and on WhatsApp you have to use WhatsApp.

“We want to give people a choice so they can reach their friends across these networks from whichever app they prefer.”

The feature will eventually include compatibility with SMS, he said, which would for example allow someone to text someone using Facebook Messenger. People will still be able to keep all of those accounts separate if they want.

Adding that feature – which Mr Zuckerberg calls “interoperability” – will feed into the privacy focus by allowing people to avoid sending unencrypted SMS messages from Messenger and instead talking on WhatsApp, where conversations are hidden, he claimed. People would also be able to speak to someone on Facebook but do so without having to give out their phone number, he suggested.

But the possibility of combining the apps has been a long-standing source of concern for privacy advocates and using. WhatsApp and Instagram founders have left the company in recent months, reportedly after disagreements over how those various platforms should work together in future.

In the post, titled “a privacy-focused vision for social networking,” Mr Zuckerberg explained how private messaging is becoming the most common and popular method people use to interact with others on its products.

“As I think about the future of the internet, I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today’s open platforms,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I expect future versions of Messenger and WhatsApp to become the main ways people communicate on the Facebook network.”

In his letter, Mr Zuckerberg detailed why people prefer private networks and the intimacy it offers them.

“People are more cautious of having a permanent record of what they’ve shared,” Mr Zuckerberg added. “I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won’t stick around forever. This is the future I hope we will help bring about.”

In addition to interoptability, he said Facebook would focus on several principles as it tried to create the future of social networking:

Private interactions. People should have simple, intimate places where they have clear control over who can communicate with them and confidence that no one else can access what they share.Encryption. People’s private communications should be secure. End-to-end encryption prevents anyone — including us — from seeing what people share on our services.Permanence. People should be comfortable being themselves, and should not have to worry about what they share coming back to hurt them later. So we won’t keep messages or stories around for longer than necessary to deliver the service or longer than people want it.Safety. People should expect that we will do everything we can to keep them safe on our services within the limits of what’s possible in an encrypted service.Interoperability. People should be able to use any of our apps to reach their friends, and they should be able to communicate across networks easily and securely.Secure data storage. People should expect that we won’t store sensitive data in countries with weak records on human rights like privacy and freedom of expression in order to protect data from being improperly accessed.

Mark Zuckerberg

The changes will be taking place “over the next year and beyond”, said Mr Zuckerberg, noting there will be “more details and tradeoffs to work through related to each of these principles”.

“Doing this means taking positions on some of the most important issues facing the future of the internet. As a society, we have an opportunity to set out where we stand, to decide how we value private communications, and who gets to decide how long and where data should be stored,” he concluded.

“I believe we should be working towards a world where people can speak privately and live freely knowing that their information will only be seen by who they want to see it and won’t all stick around forever. If we can help move the world in this direction, I will be proud of the difference we’ve made.”