"More than a billion people already use Messenger as a place to share, hang out and express themselves with family and friends," the company said. However, linking WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger together could make it more difficult for regulators to break up the company into those individual parts. But Zuckerberg argued that social media users have many chat options. Facebook also faces antitrust scrutiny in Europe and the U.S. WhatsApp founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum left over disagreements that included Facebook's plans to integrate advertising and other monetization methods. Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger abruptly announced their departures just over two years ago.Įven though they will remain standalone apps, the move to bring the chat companies together could also raise antitrust concerns over its messaging dominance.įacebook had been developing the feature in part to keep users from migrating to rival messaging services, like Apple iMessage and Google Chat. Facebook's messaging apps have a combined 3.14 billion unique users each month, according to its second quarter 2020 earnings release.Įuropean Union lawmakers expressed concerns over user privacy in January after Facebook announced its intentions. The founders of Instagram and WhatsApp have all quit the company since then - giving up hundreds of millions of dollars - and Zuckerberg has since installed loyalists in their place. Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, and it bought WhatsApp in a $16 billion deal in 2014. Wednesday's announcement is Zuckerberg's latest move to exert control over all three apps, which were originally intended to operate independently under the Facebook umbrella. "I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won't stick around forever," Zuckerberg said last March. The ultimate goal, according to Zuckerberg, is to integrate the messaging services in Instagram, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. "Me enjoying all the memes on twitter after instagram and Facebook is down," the tweet said.The move is part of Zuckerberg's plan to pivot Facebook towards private communication, as opposed to the open broadcasting by users in the News Feed. One user summed up the outage meme situation with a clip of a kid using a swing at a park as a building burns in the background. "Instagram down guess it is time to go be slutty on LinkedIn," one tweet said.Īnother tweet showed a picture of a person putting their hands on their hips and looking unimpressed, bearing the caption, "When is working just fine, but no one notices." Other social media companies, like Snapchat and LinkedIn, were also briefly trending on Twitter in relation to the outage. The caption reads, "Mark trying to fix Whatsapp, Instagram and Facebook at the same time." In another tweet, a different user posted a photo of a worker dealing with a huge, tangled mass of power lines. One user tweeted a photo of a person staring at electrical equipment, adding the caption, "Mark zuckerberg at WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook headquarters right now." Other users joked about the crisis confronting Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg given the outage. "Instagram and Facebook users trying to navigate Twitter," the caption read. Only Twitter made it to the second game."Īnother tweet included the oft-memed clip of The Weeknd looking confused as he walked through a maze of mirrors and lights to reach the stage to perform at this year's Super Bowl. Similarly, one user tweeted a photo of people hugging and celebrating, writing that the image showed Twitter's headquarters after the outage.Īnother user made reference to Netflix's hit show "Squid Game" with an image of the show's giant robot doll, writing, "WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook eliminated. Instagram also commented on Twitter's post, saying, "Hi and happy Monday," adding the spiral eyes emoji in a nod to the chaos of the outage. Twitter itself tweeted, "Hello literally everyone." WhatsApp commented, "Hello!" with the waving hand emoji, to which Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey responded, "thought this was supposed to be encrypted." "Maybe Facebook and IG will never come back and society will be much better," one user wrote.Ī lot of memes joked about Twitter gaining popularity as users of Facebook's apps flocked there during the outage. "Maybe Facebook is being repaired by the same guy who repairs the McDonald's Ice Cream Machine," another user wrote, referring to widespread complaints about the fast-food chain's ice cream availability.Īnother tweet showed a photoshopped picture of a Spirit Halloween banner over Facebook's 1 Hacker Way sign, captioned, "woah that was quick." This content is not available due to your privacy preferences.