Jakarta: WhatsApp Chief Will Cathcart just announced 2022 as the year of WhatsApp’s biggest innovation. For 2022, WhatsApp will add more than 20 new features, including communities, improvements to groups and encrypted backups.
“2022 is your most important year. Our team is passionate about creating communities, reactions, polls, avatars, video calls to 32 people and so on. Thanks to everyone who has provided us with feedback on how to improve WhatsApp. There is so much more to come in 2023!” said Cathcart.
Not only that Cathcart, the CEO of WhatsApp’s parent company Meta also uploaded to Twitter stating that WhatsApp hit a record 25 million messages per second during the final of the FIFA World Cup soccer competition. Below is a summary of the features presented by WhatsApp during 2022.
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1. Added a privacy layer
Features related to this level of privacy include hidden online status, which allows users to control who other users can see their last login and online status from their privacy settings.
Other features allow users to silently leave groups, and accidental deletion allows users to undo content or messages accidentally sent to the wrong group.
2. Introduction to the Community
The community makes it easy for schools, local groups and workplaces to manage their busy conversations by bringing multiple groups together under one umbrella, as well as providing administrators with tools, including announcement groups and the ability to create subgroups on any topic.
3. New features in groups
Along with Community, WhatsApp has introduced new features to group messaging, including the ability to create polls in chats, the option to add up to 1,024 members, instead of 256.
This feature also introduces admin deletion, giving admins the ability to delete problematic messages.
4. Voice calls and video calls are better
More and more people are using WhatsApp to connect securely with voice and video calls. This year, WhatsApp has implemented several improvements, namely calling 32 people.
Just like voice calls, this feature allows users to make mobile video calls with up to 32 people, four times the previous number. Other features include sending messages or muting call participants.
A long press on a participant enlarges the video or audio feed and allows you to mute or send messages separately. Another feature is the call link.
With this feature, whether making impromptu calls or scheduling in advance, users can easily invite people to a group call by sharing the call link.
Another feature, namely in-call banner notifications, lets users know when someone new joins a group call.
5. Voicemail is better
More than 7 billion voice messages are sent on WhatsApp every day, all protected by end-to-end encryption. In March, WhatsApp introduced a number of improvements to this experience.
A number of improvements include playback outside the chat so users can multitask or read and reply to other messages. Another improvement is to pause or resume recording.
While recording a voicemail, swipe up to lock the record button, then the user hits pause and continue as many times as needed. Another improvement is the draft preview, which allows users to listen to voice messages before they are sent and delete them if they don’t like them.
Another improvement is that it remembers playback, so that if you pause a voice message, you can pick up where you left off. Another improvement is Quick Play, which allows playback of voice messages at 1.5x or 2x speed.
6. Express yourself better
WhatsApp shares moments of joy, pride and even sadness on WhatsApp. This year, WhatsApp has added features that allow users to express themselves even better.
One of the features added by WhatsApp is emoji reactions, which allow users to react to messages with any emoji. Another feature, Avatar, allows users to create a custom avatar and use it as a profile photo or as one of 36 custom stickers.
Also, another feature, namely status updates, displays an indicator in the form of a circle around another user’s profile when adding a status. Users can also react to someone’s status with emoji reactions.
7. Better utility
More than 2 billion people love WhatsApp because it’s simple, as well as personal and reliable. This year, WhatsApp added features to make things easier, one of which is message yourself, which allows users to message themselves.
Other features include 2GB file sharing, which allows users to share up to 2GB of files, photos and videos, a significant increase from the previous limit of just 100MB, as well as migration of chats from Android to iOS and vice versa, allowing users to transfer account information, settings, profile photos and chat history when switching between operating systems.
(MMI)
