WhatsApp Launches Snapchat-Like Status Feature

Between Facebook status updates, Snapchat, and Instagram Stories and good old-fashioned texting, your friends already accept ample ways to find out what you're upwards to. At present there's yet another way to share what you're doing with people y'all know: WhatsApp Condition.

Launched on Monday, the feature lets you share photos, videos, and GIFs with all your contacts at once. From the recently redesigned WhatsApp camera app, you can personalize media with emoji, text, and drawings.

When you lot open the new Status tab, you'll encounter updates from people in your WhatsApp address volume. Like on rival platforms, these updates will expire afterwards 24 hours. Y'all tin can control who sees what you share, and mute or unmute contacts at any time. Afterward viewing someone's status, you tin can answer to that person privately, if y'all so cull.

The new WhatsApp Status characteristic started rolling out to users on Monday and will be available soon effectually the globe for iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone users.

WhatsApp said it's introducing this feature to celebrate its anniversay. The app launched nearly viii years ago, on February. 24, and was originally designed for sharing condition updates. In those early days, people could type a short line of text to let their friends know what they were up to, a la AOL Instant Messenger's away messages. WhatsApp eventually redesigned itself as a messaging app after noticing that people were using information technology to communicate in real time.

Snapchat fans, nevertheless, will likely discover the similarities between WhatsApp Status and the ephemeral messaging app. Later on failing to larn Snapchat in 2022, Facebook has simply created its ain version of Snapchat's most pop features across its own apps in recent years, from Instagram Stories and Facebook Stories to WhatsApp Status.

WhatsApp said its users now send 50 billion messages every day, including more than than 3.iii billion photos, 760 one thousand thousand videos, and fourscore million GIFs. In the last year, photo sharing on the platform has doubled and video sharing has tripled.

About Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo is PCMag's skilful on fitness and smart home products. Teaching yoga for about 10 years has helped her in evaluating a range of connected health products including fitness trackers, eye rate monitors, rowers, smart scales, stationary bikes, strength preparation machines, treadmills, and more. Angela besides tests smart home devices from her ranch in Florida, including air purifiers, kitchen appliances, and robot vacuums, just to name a few.