Facebook will not show ads in WhatApp for now: Report 

Good sense may finally have prevailed at Facebook as the social media giant is said to be ‘backing away’ from commercializing popular instant messaging service WhatsApp. What this means is that Facebook may have put on hold its controversial plan to sell ads on WhatsApp – at least for the time being. A move that had drove WhatsApp founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum out of Facebook. Facebook owns WhatsApp.   

According to a new The Wall Street Journal report, Facebook is said to have ‘disbanded’ the internal team that was tasked with finding out ways how to best integrate ads into WhatsApp and their work ‘deleted from WhatsApp’s code.’ WhatsApp may remain ad-free for now, but make no mistake, ads are coming to WhatsApp. At best one can say, they’re not going to come on as wide scale as previously speculated. Facebook still plans to bring ads to WhatsApp’s Status feature but there’s no ETA when that would happen. 

Facebook is meanwhile working to merge WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger. On the face of it, the move is focused towards building “the best messaging experiences,” by bringing together three of the world’s largest messaging networks, but there’s more to it than what meets the eye.  

The planned integration will basically allow users of WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger, to chat with one other, and will require Facebook to rebuild the underlying infrastructure of these services for seamless cross-platform interactions. More importantly, it will require Facebook engineers to add end-to-end encryption to Instagram Direct and Messenger. Although WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger are all owned by Facebook, it is only WhatsApp that supports end-to-end encryption for now. End-to-end encryption means only the recipient can read your chats.            

While a merger of this scale is expected to send a message underscoring founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s unflinching control over Facebook’s sprawling divisions while ensuring users it is serious about their privacy (by bringing end-to-end encryption to more of its services), pulling it off won’t be easy. While WhatsApp requires just a mobile number from users, Instagram and Messenger require more personal details, to sign up. There is no word on how Facebook plans on going about making these changes. Or better still, how it plans to go about selling the idea to users.        

Also Read:  Mark Zuckerberg Plans To Merge WhatsApp, Instagram And Facebook Messenger: Report