Tag: WhatsApp

WhatsApp, the most popular instant messaging application in the world, continues to strive to offer quality improvements to users who use its services. Therefore, with the aim of ensuring their protection, the app owned by Meta is working on security advances in terms of privacy and spam prevention.

With this, WhatsApp continues to show interest in improving the user experience through different paths. Despite being the most popular messaging application, improvements are always necessary to prevent competition from closing the gap, so Mark Zuckerberg’s service usually prepares constant updates to enrich its service.

Private mentions and spam filters

As discovered by Wabetainfo through the currently testing beta versions, WhatsApp is testing some changes in terms of privacy and spam. In the first case, it would involve implementing the possibility of carrying out private mentions within status updates, and the second change would prevent this new feature from being used for spamming purposes.

Through this improvement, WhatsApp users will have the ability to make private mentions in their statuses easily, giving each person the tools to have easier and more satisfying control over their privacy.

WhatsApp changes in 2024

WhatsApp has carried out numerous improvements and changes since the beginning of 2024. One of the most striking was the interface change after several years with a design that had received few changes; however, there have been more innovations in addition to the aesthetic modifications, such as functions to filter chats more easily, and they are even already working on implementing Artificial Intelligence within the WhatsApp ecosystem.

In fact, WhatsApp has also incorporated privacy measures that, in addition to aligning with the European DMA, make its service one of the most reliable and secure currently, thanks to the encryption of its messages and the protocols carried out to ensure that this information is stored securely.

Talking about the popularity and success of WhatsApp in 2024 is unnecessary to say the least. However, what is not unnecessary is talking about the new features that the messaging service from Meta keeps adding over time. In this case, it seems that the company wants us to get in touch with users we have never talked to before, or with those we haven’t spoken to in person for a long time, and to achieve this, they are implementing a new and interesting feature.

As discovered by WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is implementing a new feature called “Suggested Contacts”, which is a new list of users that the application will suggest for us to chat with, and that will appear in the chats section of the app itself. In this sense, Meta wants us to interact with even more people, in addition to those we regularly talk to. This addition is already available in the beta version of WhatsApp, thanks to the new update of version 2.24.9.5.

WhatsApp wants us to talk to contacts we’ve never chatted with before

However, although this new feature aims to connect people who have never chatted with each other from WhatsApp, it will not be intrusive at all and will not interrupt the chats we have active. That is, this addition only seeks to be a simple way for us to contact other users with whom we have never exchanged messages, as we have already said. Likewise, it should be noted that this new feature will suggest talking to contacts we have in our contact list, as expected.

The mentioned portal, which has shared this information, indicates that this new feature will be available for all users of the app, whether they are new or not. For new users, this will be a very simple and direct way to start a new chat with any contact from their list. However, for now there is no exact date for when this new feature can be enjoyed by all users of the Meta app.

As we mentioned before, this “Suggested Contacts” feature of WhatsApp is currently only available in the beta version of the Android service, so only a few people will be able to enjoy it. However, you can always download that version and try out the mentioned novelty and many others that are being added to WhatsApp.

WhatsApp, the instant messaging application from Meta, has already started testing a new privacy update on selected users that will allow users to have greater control over the information they provide to third-party companies through shared links. In this way, WhatsApp continues to improve the privacy of the service to position itself as an increasingly secure platform.

This is not the first privacy update that WhatsApp has carried out in recent months. In fact, with this new update, it can be seen that the company is interested in it and has marked it as one of its current priorities: to make WhatsApp the safest environment possible.

Privacy improvements for users

As Androidpolice advances, in recent days some users have already been able to enjoy an improvement in privacy that specifically limits link previews within WhatsApp so that these third-party websites do not have access to users’ IP addresses, a measure that aims to further improve user security on the web.

With this, this improvement joins other recent changes in other areas, such as the possibility of pinning up to three messages within the same chat, or the tests with generative AI that are being tested within the application to offer support to users in different functions and areas.

WhatsApp’s objectives

WhatsApp has a dominant position in the instant messaging app market, but they have also worked hard, and have benefited from the powerful Meta ecosystem, to maintain this dominant position that the service achieved by being one of the pioneers in making SMS messaging obsolete, whose price forced users to even economize on the number of letters in words. Since the dawn of smartphones, WhatsApp has been there, and that is remembered by hundreds of millions of users who have kept it since then.

However, not everything is a bed of roses for the service, despite being at the top in terms of instant messaging applications. To prevent strong competition like Telegram from catching up in popularity, they often find themselves forced to replicate their innovations to avoid user migration, in addition to occasionally experiencing incidents that result in service outages, such as the one that took place on April 3rd, which for a few hours hindered communication between millions of users and affected other Meta services such as Instagram or Facebook.

WhatsApp, the most famous instant messaging application currently, is working to implement one of the trendiest tools inside it: an AI that will function as a chatbot within the application. In this way, the Meta app intends to offer an important quality leap in terms of the services it offers to users.

WhatsApp prepares for a new leap

As indicated by Wabetainfo, WhatsApp is testing in its beta versions a new tool that will act as an AI-based chatbot, thus showing an important advancement in AI compared to what other competing services offer. This service would be active from within the search bar, and in that section, you will be able to ask it questions. The chatbot will respond according to the questions or commands given by the user.

In fact, considering that WhatsApp is well known for advancing in functionalities by copying the competition, it is worth noting that this feature, unlike many others, is not a method of copying its competition as it has done in dozens of occasions in the past. Therefore, it would be a step for WhatsApp to distance itself from its competitors, rather than equalizing in functions, as happens with many tools that are initially released in Telegram.

Its dispute as the hegemonic chat app

WhatsApp started with the advantage of becoming a useful and functional service from the early days of smartphones, especially in the Android format, since Apple or BlackBerry also had their own communication services. Over time, WhatsApp conquered each and every one of the systems, and today, for hundreds of millions of users, it is difficult to conceive a day-to-day without WhatsApp.

However, it has important competitors in the market. For example, WeChat or Line have a lot of strength in the Asian market, while services like Telegram have been able to adapt to multiple markets, have offered important advances in services consistently, much earlier than WhatsApp did, and thanks to that Telegram is considered the main competition for WhatsApp in chat services.

WhatsApp, the instant messaging application owned by Meta, continues to implement new features in recent times. The most recent one, in fact, will allow users to pin up to three messages within the same conversation or group chat, multiplying by three the content that can be kept temporarily or permanently at the top of a chat.

This measure can be especially useful in those groups where organization is also an important process, or because it is useful to be able to permanently fix specific content that is of interest to users. Therefore, this new improvement of WhatsApp once again represents an improvement in quality of life for users of this application.

Three pinned messages in the same chat

Just as WhatsApp already states on its website through the frequently asked questions tab, platform users will now be able to pin up to three messages simultaneously within the same chat. Until now, the limit was only one message per conversation, so thanks to this change, now three times as many messages can be pinned.

Pinning is a function that is increasingly present in various applications and social networks, since, in many cases, there are messages that we want to keep always present for a while. Thanks to pinning, users can organize themselves more efficiently, and with the increase of three pinned messages, WhatsApp users will be able to increase their management capacity.

The eventful roadmap of WhatsApp

In recent months, Meta has shown a wide range of innovations regarding WhatsApp, which demonstrates that the company does not want to relax too much, despite remaining as the most widely used instant messaging application worldwide. The recent improvement of pinning up to three messages, in this way, joins many other updates and changes that WhatsApp has carried out to improve user satisfaction.

In this way, some of the most recent updates of WhatsApp have provided users with elements such as a new interface, advances in encryption to comply with DMA guidelines, and it is also working on changes that are not yet ready, such as the creation of a tab for favorite chats and users that works independently from the ability to pin conversations at the top of the WhatsApp feed.

WhatsApp, the most used instant messaging application in the western world, now has new and eye-catching improvements that aim to offer users a new leap in quality of life and possibilities for their service. Among other things, advances have been made in privacy and in the ability of statuses to share longer videos than before.

All of these are improvements that are expected by many users, who, for example, have been demanding for a long time that WhatsApp should allow sharing videos longer than 30 seconds through statuses without being cut into different posts. Now, in that particular case, they will be able to see their request fulfilled by sharing longer videos.

Improvements in videos and design

As pointed out by techcabal, WhatsApp has carried out a new update that has made numerous changes. The most visible one is in the new interface, which adds elements at the bottom of the screen, but there are more news, such as the mentioned videos of up to 1 minute in duration to be published in the statuses.

Regarding the new design of the application, although many users have been reluctant to change (it is one of the most radical aesthetic changes in years), the bottom bar provides more information about navigation within WhatsApp and, although it reduces the amount of “useful screen” while navigating through these menus, it is capable of providing valuable data for users who navigate between different WhatsApp functions, such as channels, chats, and statuses.

Advances in privacy and messaging

These changes are not as recent as the ones mentioned above, but they are also quite important to protect users’ privacy. For example, in recent weeks, significant progress has also been made in the end-to-end encryption applied by WhatsApp, aligning it with European laws, which are more stringent than in other regions.

On the other hand, elements have also been implemented to reduce the growing spam, such as the ability to mute calls from unknown numbers (waiting, of course, for WhatsApp to implement settings to block this type of calls from unknown numbers within the app), and improvements have also been made with the temporary deletion of messages in conversations, being able to configure it by default for new conversations you are going to have.

WhatsApp is working on introducing new solutions that allow users to prioritize their conversations, offering them greater control and efficiency in their messaging experience.

One of these new features in development is the ability to designate favorite contacts, which will appear with a specific chat filter in a future update of WhatsApp Web.

The 24.3.10.70 update of the WhatsApp beta for iOS already brought that WhatsApp was working on a new feature that would allow users to designate favorite contacts.

WhatsApp is working on a favorite contacts filter feature for the web client!

WhatsApp is working on the ability to designate favorite contacts, which will appear with a dedicated chat filter in a future update.https://t.co/SI7Jb1QRnZ pic.twitter.com/szlygHJpCe

— WABetaInfo (@WABetaInfo) February 12, 2024

This enhancement is designed to quickly make calls with selected contacts directly from the calls tab, as a phone call will be just one tap away there.

Although this feature is still in development in the iOS app, it seems that WhatsApp is also working on a similar feature to offer users a custom filter for their favorite contacts.

As you can see in the attached screenshot, WhatsApp is in the process of introducing a feature that will allow users to filter the chat list by showing their favorite contacts in the future.

Users will have control over choosing their favorite contacts, as they will be able to manually add the people who matter most to them and easily reach them through a specific filter.

The feature to choose favorite contacts is under development and will be available in a future update of the web client. We hope to publish another article as soon as we have new information about this feature to share with you.

Contents that self-destruct are finally arriving on WhatsApp after years of anticipation from millions of users. This feature, which was activated over two years ago on the most popular messaging platform in the market (though, like many other improvements, was inspired by Telegram), can now be enjoyed by WhatsApp desktop users, as previously they did not have access to this content.

Before this enhancement, WhatsApp desktop users were compelled to use their smartphones to view photos or videos with self-destruct capabilities, as that content was not available for playback on a PC. Now, however, such content can be easily viewed on your PC screen without any issues.

Improvement for WhatsApp on PC

Thanks to this new improvement, WhatsApp desktop users will have access to a functionality that, until now, had been deprived from them. There might be various scenarios where a person receives an image or video that self-destructs, and in such cases, these users utilizing the desktop application won’t feel excluded.

Often, users who frequently employ WhatsApp via PC tend to be overlooked when it comes to receiving updates. However, this time, they can rejoice in the fact that Meta remembers there are millions of users who frequently utilize WhatsApp on their computers. In fact, many still demand more enhancements, such as the ability to personalize chat backgrounds, something that has been possible on smartphones for over 10 years.

WhatsApp and its roadmap

WhatsApp is working tirelessly to maintain its status as the most relevant instant messaging application today. To achieve this, it has chosen to expand its format related to communities and channels. With a very positive reception from users, the Meta-owned application has added improvements such as the ability to create voice chat group spaces in large groups, among other enhancements.

Additionally, WhatsApp has focused on enhancing the quality of content sent through its platform by introducing options for HD content transmission. By default, the application often compresses such content, reducing its size and consequently lowering its quality. However, with this improvement, users can now increase the quality of their sent content.