WhatsApp announced Status today, which is a new feature in the messaging platform and it’s similar to Instagram Stories and Snapchat. It essentially allows you to share pictures and videos on your status within the app, and they disappear after 24 hours. It’s another way for Facebook to bring Snapchat features to another one of their popular apps – and WhatsApp is actually their most popular app. This means that you’ll no longer need to stick to just text for your status on WhatsApp, but you can actually share what you’re doing with your friends and family.
In their blog post announcing the new feature, WhatsApp also announces that they are encrypting your status’ so that it is now end-to-end encrypted, and you won’t need to worry about it not being secure. The design for Status is very similar to Instagram Stories. Showing lines at the top of the screen to show you how many pictures or videos are still in their Status. You can also see their profile picture in the upper left-hand corner. It’s almost like they ripped it straight out of Instagram and put it into WhatsApp, which isn’t a bad thing, considering they are both owned by Facebook, it’s actually fairly smart as it saves them plenty of R&D time and money. The feature is rolling out today on both Android and iOS.
WhatsApp is celebrating its 8th birthday this week (on February 24th to be exact). The team started writing the code for WhatsApp in early February and it launched later that month in 2009. In those eight years, WhatsApp has surely come a long way. In fact, it is the most popular messaging service around right now. And a large part of their success is actually due to the fact that they have their app available on multiple platforms. It wasn’t that long ago that WhatsApp was also available on BlackBerry and Windows Phone, although with their market shares having dropped to below 1%, WhatsApp decided to cease development and support for those platforms. WhatsApp has had a great ride these past 8 years and they are showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon.