It’s no surprise that Facebook owns the social media market. The company operates one of the most popular photo sharing platform-Instagram, one of the most widespread IM apps-WhatsApp, and of course its namesake platform-Facebook. So, since the company already has all our data and can’t possible exploit it any more, why not get something nice out of it?
In a blog post, Facebook announced a new feature called Accounts Center, to allow users to operate multiple features on multiple platforms at one place. The center can be accessed through the settings section on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, and can be used to apply controls that will reflect across all three platforms.
Accounts Center is a feature that will allow you to control a lot of other features across Facebook’s host of apps. A masterkey, if you will. Want your stories to be automatically posted to both Facebook and Instagram? Done. Want to able to use your Facebook account to log into Instagram without the hassle of retyping your password every single time? Done. Want to use Facebook Pay to make transactions on both Facebook and Instagram? Done and done. Account center is the epitome of inter platform communication.
While Facebook Pay is not available on Accounts Center at launch, the company hopes to add it very soon. In a few weeks/ months, users will be able to just use their Facebook Pay credentials to make payments on both Facebook Shops and Instagram Shops, without having to re enter their card details every single time.
There are some other notable features as well, like linking your profile picture across platforms, which is very useful if you don’t have different personas on different Facebook owned platforms.
While the new feature is certainly useful, it can also exacerbate the already choking scrutiny that Facebook has invited from governments around the world. In a Congress hearing earlier this year, lawmakers accused the tech giant of using its power to engage in monopolistic practices, the most notable of which is crushing competition before it can pose a threat (for instance, Instagram). Now, this new feature can be seen as a flagrant display of the power that Facebook holds, which can tick regulators off and invite further scrutiny.
Nonetheless, the company says the test of the new Accounts Center will begin this week across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger.
