So all these crimes finally seemed to catch up to Facebook, and a majority of people (especially Americans) were not pleased. There have been multiple talks and proposals for the company to get split up, a court hearing for Mark Zuckerberg mid last year, a delete Facebook movement which even Facebook employees (including Whatsapp founder Brian Acton) where involved in, multiple employees quitting and a whole general disdain for the company and social media platform.  Amusingly enough, Instagram and Whatsapp, the company’s two other big platforms have largely been less controversial and been saved from the shame that Facebook.com and its apps have faced. Not that they haven’t been without flaw, Instagram had a huge user account hack issue last year and WhatsApp is a major problem when it comes to spreading fake news especially in developing countries. Hence, Facebook deciding it needs to change how it’s main platforms and these sister apps work is a pretty big step in the right direction. And it seems like they are changes coming sooner rather than later.

Now to be fair we don’t have any inside sources on exactly what Facebook’s plans are for these apps, so we can’t give you the most accurate picture on everything Facebook wants to do with it’s apps, but based on what Zuckerberg and other top ranking officials in the company have indicated, as well as some speculation from experts around the web, we think we can give you some expected changes to Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp.

For Facebook, the most apparent change is the shift to encrypted ephemeral messaging as well as shifting the focus of the company and users away from the News Feed. Now this may mean that Facebook becomes more similar to WhatsApp or other chat apps, based more on messaging and closed group communications. Some think the News Feed may be entirely done away with, but we feel that likely won’t happen. Considering how much money it’s made for the company and how it’s maybe the most significant part of Facebook as a social network, we think Facebook will make people focus less on the news feed rather than removing it. Maybe form simple user interface changes such as making your inbox appear to you first and thus indirectly pushing you to maybe focus on direct communication more rather than scrolling through the feed. The ephemeral messages part is both a catch-up-with-the-times maneuver as well as a convenient way to assure more user privacy. Ephemeral messages are basically the same as the disappearing messages you see on snapchat or Instagram. These are deleted from the servers the same time these disappear from your inbox so they won’t be read by anyone at Facebook or gathered for advertising purposes. And while Facebook’s messages where already end-to-end encrypted, it seems no one really trusted that and everyone looked for a loophole in that wherever they could find it. So this repeated promise to encryption is likely Facebook’s way of saying “really guys, we’re serious about this now”.

As for Whatsapp, well the platform has already been having measures taken to stop it from being a breeding ground for fake news. We’ve already seen how forwarded messages are now highlighted as such every time one is sent to you, as well as there being a limit to how many people/how many times you can forward a message. A new feature which may be rolled out soon is the ability to do an image search within WhatsApp, in other words allowing you to tell if an image sent to you is legitimate or someone created it using photoshop. The seeming step backward in all this is the plans to apparently start showing ads on Whatsapp. Which not only would be annoying and make it more like Facebook, we all know the only data Facebook could read about you on Whatsapp is your messages, so for some people that obviously puts WhatsApp’s encryption algorithm into question. However, this seems like it’s going to be rolled back with the new direction Zuckerberg wants to take, and since this was a plan announced prior to that, it likely won’t survive the pivot.

And as for Instagram, well, to be honest Instagram might see the least amount of change from this new pivot. In fact, its plans seem to be going right on track. It hasn’t been immune to controversy as mentioned before, but somehow the app and its brand have rarely been affected by the muddy waters Facebook swims in, and plans for Instagram to expand it’s features and even become a shopping app of sorts seem well underway. There is however the one big move that Mark Zuckerberg talked about earlier in the year, which is merging WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram into one giant platform or at least one app where you can get a bit of all three experiences. It’s an obvious (to me at least) while daring idea. Obvious in that personally I hate having multiple message threads and timelines or News Feeds among apps that are technically connected, but Facebook would have to consider the likely blowback from the technically different communities on all these platforms. For example, we all basically use WhatsApp in Zimbabwe, but a lot of us barely even pay attention to our Facebook accounts now and Instagram has become an app orientated for a seemingly younger demographic in comparison to Facebook which has registered 60-80-year-olds. Whether or not Facebook will combine its platforms is obviously still all up in the air, and all of these other changes are technically still hanging up in the air as well. But changes are likely to come, and we’ll be waiting to see how they influence three of the most influential social media apps in Zim