It is common knowledge that Whatsapp, owned by Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), has continued to gain immense popularity in a majority of the markets outside of the U.S. The company’s reliability and the elaborate messaging experience have also played a key role in the development of infrastructure, especially in the emerging markets. However, it seems that it is not done yet.
Whatsapp is rolling out new features into messaging up. They include video calling and photo editing. The features may not be new because they are already in other messaging services but the company will still embrace them. In any case, competition is healthy for any business.
In addition to the above, Whatsapp users will also interact with a Status (Stories) feature. It will enable the public sharing of photos and videos for up to 24hours. Anyone who has used Snapchat and Instagram Stories must be familiar with it.
WhatsApp users share lots of media within the app
The daily exchange of media on Whatsapp is huge. Close to 3.3 billion photos and 760 million videos are exchanged every day. It is at this point that the Status (Stories) feature comes in handy.
WhatsApp’s version of Stories is unique. For example, all Status updates are end-to-end encrypted. Product manager at WhatsApp, Randall Sarafa says, “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.”
Status feature rolling out in time for WhatsApp’s 8th anniversary
Whatsapp has come a long way in being where it stands today. Its CEO and co-founder Jan Koum they have been putting all their efforts together to improving the messaging experience and 8years down the line, they are not disappointed.
Koum further states that the company has a bigger vision for the platform. However, rumor has it that the new feature may hit back at Snapchat’s growth but this is yet to be seen. In any case, the market is competitive and every firm is fighting to keep its loyalists together.
Meanwhile, Facebook’s stock was trading at $133.53 a fall of $0.31 or 0.23%.
