Last year, Facebook has announced their plan to merge its three big messaging networks: WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram Direct to become one same platform. On Last Friday they have made the first move i.e. Facebook Messenger is taking over Instagram messaging.

On that day – the Instagram app pop-up says “There’s a new way to message on Instagram”. Aside from cross-communication between Instagram and Facebook users, they promised many more features such as emoji reactions, swipe to reply, and a new design. Once you update it, the Instagram’s messaging icon will change to that of the Facebook Messenger Logo. As of the moment, this change is still optional.

Facebook is the biggest competitor in the messaging industry, owning WhatsApp (around 2 billion monthly active users) and Facebook Messenger which is the second biggest service (around 1.3 billion users), the third place is China’s WeChat app with 1.2 billion users, according to Statista.

Their next move should be merging WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, which will create a super network containing nearly 3.3 billion users and about 43% of the world’s population will be using the single messaging service in the future.