Instagram Users Have Updated To Message with Messenger

According to the executive who runs the Messenger business, the adoption of Facebook’s interoperability between Messenger and Instagram is ahead of expectations. Stan Chudnovsky, Facebook’s head of Messenger said that they are beating the expectation in terms of how fast and the number of people upgrading.

The company said more than 60% of eligible users on Instagram have updated to the new experience, which allows them to exchange messages with people on Messenger. This is the first time Facebook has provided a figure on the adoption rate of the update.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in March 2019 announced plans to allow cross-app messaging between Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. From Facebook’s perspective, allowing people to exchange messages across apps removes a friction point between the idea that not everybody knows which app to use which increases messaging usage. However, Facebook today does not earn much money from advertising in its messaging apps.

California based technology company began rolling out cross-app communication between users of Messenger and Instagram in September 2020 but is still a ways away from integrating WhatsApp into the mix. The company has to build end-to-end encryption into Messenger, as WhatsApp already has that feature. That update won’t be finished until well into 2022. Facebook no longer breaks out usage figures for each app individually, but in 2017 the company said Messenger had more than 1.3 billion monthly users, in 2018 it said Instagram had over 1 billion, and in 2020 it said WhatsApp had more than 2 billion users. The company said 70% of Americans use three or more messaging apps. A third of those users find it difficult to remember where certain conversation threads are.

iPhone users must use the company’s iMessage app for texting their friends. That stands in contrast to Google’s Android operating system, which allows users to set other messaging services, including Facebook’s Messenger, as their default app for sending text messages.iPhone users who prefer Messenger over Apple’s iMessage app are in a disadvantaged position because they can’t change that default and they have to be stuck with what Apple wants them to use.