WhatsApp keeps its users engaged with new features and updates for the platform. Now it has introduced a new feature called ‘WhatsApp Channels’.
As per The Verge, an American technology news website, the latest WhatsApp feature introduces a new type of communication to the world’s most popular chat app. It’s known as Channels, and it’s intended for one-to-many broadcasting rather than discussion. The Meta-owned firm described it as “a private way to follow what matters,” and mentions local and sports updates as examples of how you may use it.
Channels in a new tab called Updates – where you’ll find Status and channels you choose to follow – separate from your chats with family, friends, and communities.
Channels are a one-way broadcast tool for admins to send text, photos, videos, stickers, and polls. To help select channels to follow, the company is building a searchable directory where you can find your hobbies, sports teams, updates from local officials, and more.
This feature comes with most private broadcast service available. This starts by protecting the personal information of both admins and followers. As a channel admin, your phone number and profile photo won’t be shown to followers. Likewise, following a channel won’t reveal your phone number to the admin or other followers. Who you decide to follow is your choice and it’s private.
According to WhatsApp statement quoted by The Verge repory, privacy is an important component of the experience, which is why channel admins’ information isn’t shared and the app only saves 30 days of a channel’s history. Admins can even prevent screenshots and forwarding, ensuring that what is in the channel remains in the channel. Channels, on the other hand, are not end-to-end encrypted; they are regarded more like your messages with businesses, which are also not completely private. However, WhatsApp has stated that it is considering ways to encrypt some channels in the future.
WhatsApp is gradually evolving into more than just a messaging software. Just in the last few months, the company has made it possible to use one account on multiple phones, has been working on a private newsletter tool and a new usernames system, has added polls, shopping, and a slew of other Facebook-y things to the platform, has revamped its Status system, improved its group chats, and much more. Channels is simply the latest attempt by WhatsApp to integrate social media into chat.
Channels, like most WhatsApp innovations, is starting small. The company intends to establish channels with leading global voices and select organizations in Colombia and Singapore, where Channels will first be available, to build, learn, and adapt the experience. It will expand to more nations and make channel creation open to more users “in the coming months.”
WhatsApp is certainly still primarily a messaging service – billions of people use it to communicate with friends and family. However, as it seeks to expand, generate more money, and become the all-encompassing super app it desires, it is attempting to be much more than that.