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Soon You'll be Creating Stories on WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook - All at Once!

On November last year, Facebook killed Messenger Day and consolidated it with Facebook as Stories, the 24-hour ephemeral posts in either Facebook or Messenger appeared in both apps synced with each other.


And after a while Instagram rolled out a “cross-post to Facebook Stories” feature that populated to Messenger too, though there was no current plan to allow Facebook Stories to be pushed to Instagram.


Now Facebook is looking at how to bring WhatsApp into the fold.


Facebook could soon offer users an option to post the same Story to three networks that are all owned by the tech giant. Instagram recently confirmed the testing of a tool to cross-post Stories as a WhatsApp status. After users in Brazil spotted the new option, Instagram confirmed to Tech Crunch that the feature is currently in testing. Like the option to post an Instagram Story to Facebook Stories, the tested tool would allow Stories to also post to WhatsApp, where they would live as a status. While both Instagram and WhatsApp are Facebook-owned, that accessible code shortcut is what’s currently making the cross-posting possible for users who are included in the test.



Sources tell that the company is now running a test to let users post their Instagram Stories directly to WhatsApp, as a WhatsApp Status, a corresponding Snapchat-like feature in the latter messaging app where decorated photos, videos and GIFs can be posted with encryption, disappearing after 24 hours. An Instagram Story posted as a WhatsApp Status also becomes encrypted like the rest of WhatsApp.

From what we understand, the feature is currently being tested with a small number of users.

It’s based on publicly available code that WhatsApp makes available to integrate WhatsApp messaging with third-party apps on the web or on Android. Users get an option to tap to share to WhatsApp from the Instagram sharing screen, but they still have to press “send” in WhatsApp to post the story.

Encouraging Story posting between Instagram and WhatsApp Status is notable because it gives a little more social media spin to WhatsApp, which Facebook acquired in 2014 for $19 billion with the explicit promise that it would stay independent of Facebook. As it happens, the new feature that’s being tested does bypass Facebook’s flagship apps completely.

Together, this could all help Facebook grow its overall engagement and traffic footprint.

If you're a developer and want to try out how to integrate WhatsApp right inside Instagram follow our next post.

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