There is no chat app that beats WhatsApp in terms of numbers. This has been the case for more than a decade, and even in a world that is filled to the brim with similar products, including but not limited to Telegram, iMessage, and other solutions for the Chinese market, the Meta-owned chat app has maintained its top position.
And how did it get there? Well, call it early market entrance. WhatsApp has been around since 2010 when the smartphone market started to grow. Over the years, it garnered millions of users, and it currently commands more than 2 billion active monthly active users.
The app has its limitations. It’s not cloud-based as Telegram, which is a bummer to the likes of yours truly, but the app is trying to make a slow move in that direction: now, you can use the platform on multiple devices, mainly PCs, and you don’t even need to have an active connection to your primary WhatsApp on your mobile. It has also been supplemented with business tools, which help businesses sell products and liaise with their customers at a tap.
Now, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that the app will, in the coming days, be supplemented with more privacy features.
One of them should have been implemented a long time: you know when you are in a group but can’t leave it because the exit will notify all members? You do not need to worry about that anymore because you will soon be doing so without notifying everyone.
Secondly, you can now control who sees your last seen. This means that you will be able to block certain contacts from seeing your Last Seen status. This will be terrific for a lot of people who want to be stealthy on the chat app.
Also, remember when the app introduced a ‘once view feature?’ This implied that you could send a media message and the recipient, and they could only see it once before it self-destructed. However, you could still take a screenshot, defeating the purpose of the feature anyway.
Now, you will no longer be able to do so because WhatsApp says that ‘view once’ messages cannot be screenshotted.
Cool, right?
