If you are an avid social media user, you will notice a new feature from WhatsApp called Status. This one allows users to post a photo or video that will last for 24 hours instead of just posting a status in texts. This is very similar to Snapchat’s Stories feature. The new WhatsApp feature was launched last Monday.
This feature is available in France and the Netherlands since Monday. Later in the week, it will be available in Italy, Spain, U.K., Saudi Arabia, and Israel.
WhatsApp started out as a way for people to know what other users in their network are up to. The users can type short status in text. The developers then noticed that people were using the application to make real-time communication so they added the messaging feature in the app. WhatsApp is the world’s largest messaging app with more than 1.2 billion active users every month. It is very timely for the Facebook-owned company to launch the new update featuring Status for their eighth anniversary.
What makes the WhatsApp Status feature different from other social media apps is that it lets the users post GIFs. In addition, anything shared in the Status is encrypted so you do not have to worry about privacy issues. After 24 hours of posting your status, the status will vanish from your WhatsApp account.
As compared to other social media platforms, you can upload up to 45 seconds of video rather than merely 10 seconds from other apps. Another property of the Status feature is that it can only be seen by other users in your address book and not by any other follower that you might not really know. The media that you want to share in the WhatsApp Status feature can be personalized using texts, drawings, or emoji.
Another opportunity that the WhatsApp status offers is for posting advertisements. Snapchat and Instagram’s way of making business is through flashing ads with their Stories feature. With the Status feature from WhatsApp, they can incorporate advertisements in this feature as well. However, as per WhatsApp’s product manager Randall Sarafa, they do not yet have plans in showing ads to the users despite this opportunity.
Sarafa also mentioned that the feature is already being used in other social media platforms, and it is also being adopted by WhatsApp. However, he also said that they made other interesting features in the app to make it stand out from other social media features.
The new Status feature is a new way for users to share media with other users in their network. This will be in addition to the recorded 50 billion messages sent by users every day. This also includes 80 million GIFs, 760 million videos, and 3.3 billion photo images.
As we can see, different social media platforms are all competing for features that will impress their users. Even if some apps develop similar features, they also make it a point to add other features to make their mobile app stand out from the others. The WhatsApp Status is one of these features that users can truly have fun with.
