messaging will open up to competition

Starting in March, WhatsApp users will be able to send and receive messages from other platforms.

Currently, each instant messaging application has its own private domain namely that a WhatsApp user can only talk to another WhatsApp user and a Messenger user, to another Messenger user. But, from March 2024, we will be able to chat with our Telegram, Signal, WeChat, Viber contacts, directly from WhatsApp. There will no longer be a need to install dozens of applications.

This is one of the consequences of the European regulation on digital markets. To avoid monopolies, the most popular applications must open up to competition. And on the messaging side, this concerns WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

Concretely, not all messages will be mixed. In WhatsApp, for example, there will be a new section “third-party messaging services” where we will see those coming from competing platforms, to be able to clearly differentiate between WhatsApp conversations and others.

A function not obligatory

However, the most popular feature, groups, will not be supported. We won’t be able to add someone who is on Signal, for example, at least not at first. Only exchanges between two people will be accepted, whether for texts, photos or vocals. Finally, it will be an option that we will have the choice to activate or not, because the risk of opening it is that some people can take advantage of it to send spam, as is the case today with SMS.

We do not yet know with which messaging services this will work because it is now up to the competing platform to do most of the work to become compatible with WhatsApp. However, today, no one has yet officially declared themselves.

The first will probably be the so-called universal clients, like Beeper or All-in-One Messenger. They already allow you to communicate with several messaging services in the same application. Until now, it was through manipulation, but now they will be able to do it officially.