First, it was Facebook’s Instagram that copied the Stories Feature from Snapchat, and they were pretty transparent about and did dodge away from the fact and they also went ahead to call it as Stories too.
Then it was discovered that the Facebook Messenger is testing a similar feature which was called the Messenger Day. Now, it doesn’t come quite as a surprise when Facebook’s WhatsApp is the next in line to copy and add a similar feature.
The New Tab – Status
The new feature called Status has been added to the WhatsApp app. This new feature comes as a new tab in between the Chats and the Calls tabs. Clicking on the Status tab allows the user to create a new status post. The Status feature will allow the users to share their photos and videos with all the contacts or with selected people from the WhatsApp contacts list. The users can edit the photos and videos and share them as a status update. The feature is an experimental try by WhatsApp and it is still in its Beta testing stages available for the beta testing public of WhatsApp. Here comes the catch! The smartphone device needs to jailbroken or rooted so that the users can get access to this feature right away.
What’s New about the Status Feature
Almost everything that could be done on the Snapchat clone can be done exactly in the same way here in WhatsApp’s Status. The new feature allows the users to scribble on the images, add emojis, add texts, doodle them and do anything the user wishes to the photos and videos. The users can also trim the videos after having recorded them. However, there is no way yet to set a specific time limit to manage for how long for these statuses can be displayed. These statuses tend to linger there for almost 24 hours and then get deleted automatically. There is no way yet for the users who wish to delete them before the 24 hours time limit. So, the photos and videos which have been edited and doodled and posted as a status update will have to wait till the expiry time of 24 hours after which they will disappear themselves.
The Status updates on WhatsApp seem to have been around for quite some time, but it was a splitting image of the procedure followed to change statuses on Skype, like setting the status to “Do Not Disturb” or “Away” or any other personal message. It is quite surprising that WhatsApp has not yet got rid of the current status feature, which is still living in the Settings menu though there has been a new implementation of an entire tab being allocated for the same.
The new Status feature was first observed by the eagle-eyed folks who have been keenly observing the WhatsApp betas on both the Android and iOS platforms. The WhatsApp Status feature is still in its beta testing stages and it is not yet clear when the feature will be rolling out to the stable channel for the public to use it. It is not even clear if the feature will arrive in the same way as it has been expected to or if it will ever be rolled out to the public. As always, it is expected to arrive with another new updated version of WhatsApp. The Status feature highlights the constant desire of the social networking giant, Facebook, to grab the user base of Snapchat. Recently, there were reports that Facebook even tried to acquire Snow, a South Korea-based Snapchat clone tech company.