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21st Feb 2017

WhatsApp Addicted? Listen Up Because Some Major Changes Are Happening

Alana Laverty

One of the things we love about WhatsApp is its simplicity. 

There’s nothing complex about it. 

Connect to WIFI or 3G, type a message and press the send button. 

And all for free! We really do love it, and spend a decent chunk of our days having the banter in WhatsApp groups – sending pics, screenshots and QOTDs. 

But something major has arrived in Europe

And it’s called WhatsApp Status. 

In a nutshell, it is essentially the same concept as Snapchat Stories and Instagram Stories. 

Video and picture content that is only available for viewing by your contact list – for 24 hours. 

Personally I’ve probably updated my WhatsApp status twice ever. It comes up under your name in your contact’s contact list. 

You could originally choose from suggest statuses like ‘Sleeping’, ‘Available’, ‘Can’t talk, WhatsApp only’. 

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But this really isn’t the kind of thing you update on the regular. Whereas the likes of video and picture is something you would update – as proven by both Snap and Insta. 

WhatsApp want their 1.2 billion users to utilise this new tool. This is Facebook’s, owners of WhatsApp, latest attempt to challenge and, ultimately, dominate Snapchat. 

Status is described as being “easy and secure” as it’s protected by the same end-to-end encryption that WhatsApp messages are. 

We can see a few different flaws to this new feature. The main one being that you may be WhatsApp friendly with someone who you would never be Snapchat friendly with. Do you really want the whole office team to see you drinking G&Ts on a Sunday night before work?

Think you’ll use it? Let us know in the comments below. 

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