A brand new icon has appeared in the app of the social network owned by Mark Zuckerberg: a “Send” button that would allow to send the contents of the post that you are viewing to the users of WhatsApp.
These are only technical tests, but still quite impressive. According to the site GeekTime, through a screenshot taken quickly by dozens of other specialized sites, Facebook would be testing an integration with WhatsApp, the popular application for instant messaging acquired for $19 billion during in February 19, 2014.
The proof is an icon appeared in the famous app of the social network of Mark Zuckerberg: a new “Send” button that would allow to send to WhatsApp users the content of the post that you are viewing. The new button appears on the right side (for left-to-right languages) for some users in the most recent version of the Facebook for Android app. In fact the change, for now, concerns only a small group of users who have downloaded the update of Facebook for Android (version 31.0.0.7.13). In the intentions of the giant of Menlo Park, they should test the new function.
The GeekTime site, which appears reliable (it was the first to anticipate in October 2014 the introduction of VoIP in WhatsApp), also reports rumors that the teams of both platforms are working on an integration that would strengthen the position of Facebook in the field of instant messaging, dominated by two services: WhatsApp, with 700 million monthly active users, and Facebook Messenger, with 600 million monthly active users.
In other words, the integration will be made, despite Zuckerberg push more and more his Messenger (as evidenced by the Messenger Platform for developers launched during the last F8, which will provide many new specific apps to the instant messaging service) and Jan Koum, one of the co-founders of WhatsApp, has ensured in February 2014, just days after the acquisition of the app, that “there is no plan of integration with Facebook.”
But, as we were saying, according to unconfirmed rumors, teams from both companies are already working on a deeper integration that will include the ability to send messages between Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.