A few years ago, Facebook wanted to buy Snapchat but the deal did not go through. With this, Facebook thought it was a good idea to incorporate some Snapchat features on its platforms. The company already did this last year when it introduced Instagram Stories, a clone of Snapchat Stories.
This did not end there as currently another Facebook owned platform, WhatsApp, is introducing a new feature inspired by Snapchat Stories. The company calls this WhatsApp Status and it builds on the existing status option available on the messaging platform.
With the older status, you could only post a text message but the new WhatsApp Status allows you to include photos and videos too. This is similar to Instagram and Snapchat stories as the photos or videos will appear in montage format and will disappear after 24 hours.
The videos shared on WhatsApp Status can be as long as 45 seconds long and sharing of GIFs is also possible. WhatsApp Status updates will only be visible to users in your address book and not just people who have your contacts but you have not saved theirs. This is neat and means that not every Tom, Dick and Harry who has your phone number will see your Status. In addition to this, there is a setting option that will allow you to tweak it is such a way that some people see it while others don’t.
“This is a format that is being broadly adopted, and we’re adopting it as well. There are some pretty interesting things that we’ve done to make it unique to WhatsApp,” WhatsApp’s product manager, Randall Sarafa, told Recode.
Viewing what your friends have shared is easy, just open the Status tab and a list of friends who have shared something will be populated. When you open a friend’s Status, you will be able to pause it, skip through it or even jump to the next Status by swiping left. To reply to a Status you are viewing, just swipe up.
The new WhatsApp Status option is rolling out to users in select markets including France, Netherlands, U.K., Spain, Italy, Israel and Saudi Arabia before expanding to other markets.
Also Read: WhatsApp’s Two Step Verification Is Now Available To All Users On Android, IOS And Windows Phone
