It is not the most used of the star messaging application, but that does not imply that they stop being used: WhatsApp States have their audience. Aware that they should give it more presence, in Meta they reinforce that part of the application with an important refresh: WhatsApp States receive five important news. From the circles on avatars to the link preview.

Meta is used to testing small changes in WhatsApp as brushstrokes, generally for betas. Once they are more than settled as experiments, the next step is include all these new features in the stable application. They tend to sneak into the application; no matter how much each change ends up reaching users in drops. And we already have a new batch of improvements, this time focused on the States.

Improvements to bring states to the foreground

Privacy selector in WhatsApp

Statuses are not used in WhatsApp to the same extent that Stories are used in Instagram, and that both functionalities are basically identical (and taken from Snapchat). Not that an instant messaging application needs a ephemeral and more or less public method of communication; even if the States do have their own public. To expand the coverage of use, from Meta they give more power to WhatsApp States.

Many of the changes were already enjoyed by those who used the WhatsApp beta, both on Android and iPhone. With confirmation by Meta, the news reaches all users of the instant messaging platform. These novelties are:

• Privacy for States. It is possible to choose which specific contacts can access the States. By tapping on a specific own post, WhatsApp offers a new privacy selector.
• voice states. WhatsApp allows ephemeral communications through voice: up to 30 seconds of audio.
• Reactions to States. As with the rest of the received and sent messages, it is also now possible to react to the States. Of course, only with eight Emojis: 😍, 😂, 😮, 😥, 🙏, 👏, 🎉 and 💯.

Reactions to WhatsApp States

• Status updates on WhatsApp avatars. The chats will show when one of the contacts has a Status to view. To indicate this, a ring will appear around the contact icon.
• Preview of links in the States. WhatsApp will show what is behind the links based on previewing the content.

All these novelties will gradually reach the applications. Some features are already present, others may take time to land: WhatsApp will activate them from its servers and according to user accounts.

More information | Goal