Considering how Facebook spent around $19 billion on WhatsApp, it would be surprising if the company DIDN’T integrate WhatsApp into its own app. That’s exactly what Facebook appears to be doing now, starting with a recent beta version of its Android app. This is actually the first major WhatsApp integration that Facebook has implemented despite owning the app for more than a year.
A few months back, we first uncovered WhatsApp’s plans to integrate voice calls into its app. Now, we’ve got another early look to share with you. It took Facebook a little over a year since the acquisition of WhatsApp to start incorporating its new asset into Facebook’s platform. On Saturday, we learned that Facebook has begun testing a new feature in its Facebook for Android app (Version 31.0.0.7.13) that includes the first major integration of WhatsApp. As you can see in the images above, Facebook has added a “Send” button with the familiar WhatsApp icon as a part of the status actions buttons that appear under each status update. 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. Here are more photos demonstrating the new update.
