You might be aware that Facebook has made some major acquisitions in the past. Some of the biggest and most famous acquisitions out of these are that of WhatsApp and Instagram. Yes, if you thought that these apps were developed by Facebook then they were not. However, Facebook’s problem is that not enough people know that these apps are owned by the company. While Facebook says that it will let both the entities run independently, it also wants to tell you that they own them.
For this reason, Facebook has now announced that it is renaming WhatsApp and Instagram. However, you don’t need to worry about this though. Because neither of the apps’ original names are changing. Basically, WhatsApp and Instagram will still remain WhatsApp and Instagram. The only thing that is being renamed is that you will see an extended name of the apps in its about section. For example, you would currently see WhatsApp’s name as WhatsApp in its About section too. But now, Facebook will rename WhatsApp’s name in the About section to ‘WhatsApp by Facebook’.
Apart from WhatsApp, Instagram will have a similar change as well. Instagram’s name in the about section will be changed to ‘Instagram by Facebook’. While this may sound strange and funny to some, this might not even be noticed by people who never visit an app’s about section. Both the apps will have no name change in its respective app store listings and other places too. So this sounds like something that Facebook could have done silently. But instead, we now know about it because of a leak.
In other words, there is nothing to worry about if you are using these apps frequently or occasionally. A spokesperson from Facebook said that “We want to be clearer about the products and services that are part of Facebook.”