WhatsApp begins rolling out a major update, which it says 'reinvents the status feature'
February 20, 2017
Facebook owned WhatsApp has announced in a blog post today the roll out of its revamped status feature. Starting today, users on all supported platforms will receive the new feature, which allows the use of pictures and videos as status updates in a similar way to Snapchat Stories.
WhatsApp was first conceived in February 2009 as "an application that lets your friends and other contacts know what you're up to", focused only on its status feature and without messaging capabilities.
But the service has evolved far beyond that and to celebrate its eighth anniversary on February 24, the company has decided to revamp that first feature by allowing the use of pictures and videos on it. Furthermore, as stated on the blog post, the status updates will also be end-to-end encrypted, as messages exchanged on the service have been since November 2014.
The updated WhatsApp status is another move by its parent company, Facebook, to try to lure users of the Snapchat Stories feature. Back in August last year, Facebook's Instagram announced the release of its own Stories feature, which has received several updates since.
WhatsApp has recently been reviewing its supported platforms to focus on the most-used ones, and has already removed some versions of Windows, Android and iOS from that list.
Source: WhatsApp Blog via MSPoweruser
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