Mark Zuckerberg appears to be mighty keen on the short-video business. Despite Meta Platforms' widely panned attempts to turn Instagram into a direct TikTok competitor with a heavy focus on 'Reels' over photographs, the social media behemoth is doubling down in this regard by testing a similar feature on its social messaging app, WhatsApp.
According to reports, WhatsApp — which recently released a bevvy of features tightening user privacy and also granting more rights to group admins — is working on a new update that will allow users to view their contacts' status (similar to Instagram Stories) easily.
Users are currently allowed to post statuses on WhatsApp that are in a photo or video format — or even just a simple text message — that will stay live for 24 hours. Users are also allowed to choose who can view their status updates.
As per reports, with the new update, WhatsApp users will let people view their contacts' statuses through the chat list directly, as opposed to going to the separate Status — this can be done by just tapping on the contact's profile photo, a report suggested.
As per the report, the feature is in beta testing only on the Android platform and will roll out the final version in a phased manner.
Earlier, Facebook announced that it would allow users to create Reels from Stories that they have already shared. Further, Meta introduced ‘Add Yours’, an interactive feature for Reels on Instagram and Facebook, to enhance engagement.
Earlier, Instagram, in the face of severe user backlash, was forced to undo some controversial changes it had ushered in.
Users had been complaining a lot about the full-screen feed that has been rolled out to selective users, the number of irrelevant posts and reels on their feed and the missing posts from the people that they actually know and want to know more about.
Instagram has received a lot of criticism from its users for trying to be the “second TikTok” with more Reels, full-screen feeds and content from people and accounts they don’t follow.
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