Earlier this month, we shared with you that Facebook is adding its name to Instagram and WhatsApp, and would soon call them “Instagram from Facebook” and “WhatsApp from Facebook”. For WhatsApp, this change seems to be coming very soon as it’s latest beta update reportedly adds the ‘WhatsApp from Facebook’ tag to the app.
Earlier this year, The Information was first to report on the news of Facebook including its name on WhatsApp and Instagram, and Facebook confirmed it later. A Facebook spokesperson said, “We want to be clearer about the products and services that are part of Facebook.”
According to a report by MS Poweruser, the ‘WhatsApp from Facebook’ tag is visible under Settings and is a clear indication of Facebook marking its territory.
On top of that, just a week ago, Facebook started adding its name to some screens on Instagram, one of the first links it has given users to its ownership of the popular platform. Although Facebook has kept the app separate, the company hasn’t given up on the dream of a unified platform.
This move comes as Facebook, which is the world’s largest social media company, faces extensive scrutiny from regulators around the world for more transparency over data privacy practices and how or who it shares user information with.
Facebook purchased Instagram back in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, and each is now used by more than 1 billion people.
Instagram has become primarily important in adding to Facebook’s revenue considering that the app largely stayed out of its parent’s privacy scandals. Not forgetting that it also pulls in younger consumers at a much faster rate, thus attracting more advertisers.
The ‘WhatsApp from Facebook’ tag comes less than a week after the Facebook-owned platform started rolling out a feature called “Fingerprint lock” for its Android beta users. This would let people use fingerprint to open WhatsApp.
As much as the feature lets users open WhatsApp, users will still be able to answer calls even when WhatsApp is locked.
WABetaInfo reported that you need to update your WhatsApp version to the 2.19.221 Android beta first for the Fingerprint lock feature to be enabled.
To enable it, open WhatsApp “Settings” and then go to “Account” and then to the “Privacy” section where one can spot the “Fingerprint Lock”.
“The previous update might get the feature as well, but WhatsApp is always used to enable features in recent updates (that might contain bug fixes and improvements for the feature), so you should install the 2.19.221 update as above mentioned,” said the report.