San Francisco: Facebook appears to be testing a new feature which will allow the users to launch WhatsApp directly from its app.
A dedicated WhatsApp button showed up in the Facebook app of some users on the Android platform, which acted like a shortcut to open the chat app, The Next Web reported late on Friday.
The new button, which can be found in the menu area of the app, is currently available to a few users on the Android version of the app, but might be available to some iOS users too.
There has not been any formal announcement by the social media giant and it is unclear whether it will become available to all Facebook users.
The feature was first reported by Facebook user Arvind Iyer, who said the new shortcut appeared after he switched the app’s language setting to Danish.
The company has previously chosen Denmark for other limited rollouts like its standalone video-sharing app “Bonfire”, the report added.
Facebook is also working on a new feature called “Instant Videos” that downloads Facebook videos while connected with Wi-Fi to help the users save their data.
The “Instant Videos” would be similar to Facebook’s hosted content format — “Instant Articles” that loads faster than mobile websites.
Reason for adding WhatsApp shortcut feature is not clear
With this new feature, users can simply launch WhatsApp from Facebook just by clicking on the button which will cut the need for to leave Facebook and open WhatsApp from phone’s home screen.
However, the time needed to navigate to the menu area of the Facebook app is almost same as the time needed to launch WhatsApp from the notification bar of the phone.