"WhatsApp already has a strong privacy focus, the focus now is to build ways users may want to interact in the digital living room," said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook's annual developers conference F8 yesterday. By digital 'living room', he's referring to Facebook's more private messaging apps WhatsApp and Messenger as opposed to more public or 'townsquare' platforms Facebook and Instagram. Part of Facebook's privacy-focused future is redesigning the townsquare platforms to allow for more private interactions, and for the living room apps to allow users to do more within the already private apps - with a focus on payments, interactions with businesses (especially small businesses), and Stories. "Status is the most popular ephemeral stories product in the world, even bigger than Instagram. This is because its completely focused on delivering a private and intimate experience with people that you know, there's no public figure accounts that you can follow, and its end-to-end encrypted." "We want to make sure that the experience is focused on the closest friends and family and not just from whoever posts the most. We are looking to do more ranking on the client side as we move more of our systems to be encrypted. This is going to be more important across apps." Here's a look at whats coming to WhatsApp, announced by WhatsApp product head Ami Vora and Zuckerberg: 1. Payments should be as easy as sending photos: Zuckerberg believes that "sending money should be as easy as sending a photo. WhatsApp is…
