One month before the end of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), WhatsApp plans to allow other messaging networks in its application. In an interview with Wired, Dick Brouwer, director of engineering at WhatsApp, said that the company is ready to provide cooperation on the platform with more than 2 billion users. The law mandates gatekeepers like WhatsApp and Messenger to open up their services to other social media apps. Meta is also working to add support for other social media apps to Messenger.
Initially, these experiences will focus on one-on-one chats where people can send text messages, audio, video, images, and files across apps. As WABetaInfo previously reported, this will be in a small menu at the top of the box called “Third Chats.” Brouwer, who worked on the encryption at the end of Messenger last year, told Wired that this will be transparent to avoid spam and gossip.
WhatsApp will require end-to-end encryption in order to sync. However, Apple’s recent changes to the App Store may indicate that the statement may not be straightforward. Recently, the founder of Matrix, Matthew Hodgson, said that he worked with WhatsApp “experimentally” to make the process work with end-to-end encryption.
It is not known if other operators like Telegram, Viber, and Google plan to add support for connecting to WhatsApp. Brouwer told Wired that third-party chats and WhatsApp-style chats may not reach interoperability because the connection could open up new privacy and security issues.
Apps that bring multiple messages under one umbrella have been popping up for the past few months. Last October, WordPress.com owner Automattic bought Texts.com for $50 million. Pebble smartwatch founder Eric Migicovsky’s Beeper has been in the news for his efforts – which Apple has put on hold – to bring iMessage to Android phones.
