Instagram is intent on invading every aspect of the Facebook ecosystem. Facebook already allows users to share Instagram Stories to their Facebook profile. Now the company is testing letting users share their Instagram Stories to WhatsApp.
While Facebook and Instagram share the Stories name for the ephemeral collection of videos and pictures that disappears from a user’s page after 24 hours, Facebook has not transferred that name to WhatsApp. On WhatsApp, this feature will be called a WhatsApp Status.
Despite the name change feeling unnecessary, it actually makes sense. Once an Instagram Story is shared as a WhatsApp Status, it becomes encrypted like the rest of WhatsApp. The name change for this feature marks the company’s slightly different handling of the content.
The fact that Facebook is trying to integrate Instagram Stories into every product it owns suggests that the company wants to entice more people to use Instagram, which has 300 million people sharing Stories on a daily basis. Conversely, WhatsApp integration with Instagram may also convince more people to use WhatsApp Status.
It also wasn’t very hard for Facebook to allow Instagram to post to WhatsApp because the code for third-party app integration is publicly available, so the company is doing what it already allows everyone else to do.
Users who want to cross-post a Story will be prompted to from the Instagram sharing screen. Once they do that, users still have to go into WhatsApp to press “send” to post the Story/Status. However, Facebook has yet to fully develop an algorithm that prevents users from seeing the same Story once on each platform the company owns.
