At the F8 conference in 2019, Facebook confirmed its plan to offer a unified chat experience that merges Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp conversations via interoperability. Now, the first sign of that merger has appeared via an Instagram update for users, which also adds a dedicated Messenger button that replaces the regular DM icon in the top right corner.
The update message mentions the following four changes:
- New colorful look for your chats
- React with any emoji
- Swipe to reply to messages
- Chat with friends who use Facebook
Even though the Messenger button now appears in the Instagram app, cross-platform chat between Messenger and Instagram is not available yet, at least for now. Reports claim that end-to-end encryption would be a crucial element of the amalgamated WhatsApp-Instagram-Messenger experience, and that work on building the underlying infrastructure will still take some time before it arrives for end users.