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With around 2 billion monthly users, WhatsApp is the world’s largest messaging app. Looking at this number, Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp now sounds a very smart move. Although the founding members of WhatsApp John Acton and Jim Kaun have left the company now and also gave up $1.3 billion in a long lasting tension between Facebook and WhatsApp.
The main reason why both co founders decided to leave the company is because very soon, you will be seeing Ads in WhatsApp soon. Both founders wanted the world’s largest messaging app to be ad free and once they saw Mark Zuckerberg’s future plans about WhatsApp to bring in advertisements, they decided to call it a day.
Let’s take a quick look at 8 important features of WhatsApp you probably do not know yet.
WhatsApp clone in your browser
Not many people know that WhatsApp has a web version as well. All you need to do is scan a QR code from mobile and you are good to go. You can access web version of WhatsApp here.
Last Seen:
WhatApp privacy settings allow any friend to view your ‘last seen’ status. It shows the time when you were last active or online. If the setting is put to ‘Everybody‘ which it is by default, then anyone can check out when you were last active on WhatsApp. You can change it by switching the ‘Last seen‘ activity to ‘Nobody‘ from WhatsApp settings.
Message Previews:
WhatsApp recent update gives you a small preview of all your incoming messages. You can turn this feature off by going to the Notification settings and toggling the ‘Show Preview‘ option to off.
WhatsApp Status:
WhatsApp statuses are videos, photos or text messages that appear for 24 hours. You can share the status with your friends only if you do not make your posts public.
Read Receipts:
WhatsApp tells the sender whether their message has been read or not. You can turn off the read receipts and blue ticks will not show which is a WhatsApp sign of showing that a message is read.
Stop Media Auto Save:
You can stop WhatsApp from saving media (pictures/videos) to be shared on your smart phone. You can do that by Taping the three vertical dots on the top right > Settings. Then tap Chat settings > Media auto-download.
Send Video as animated GIF:
On WhatsApp, select the video you want to send. WhatsApp will show a preview along with option to trim the video and also add a title (caption). On top, under the preview timeline, you will see a box titled ‘GIF’ . By taping on it, WhatsApp will convert and send your video as an animated GIF
Only you can open WhatsApp:
The feature is finally rolled out. WhatsApp has enabled the feature for iOS users first in the latest version, 2.19.20. Once enabled, now no one will be able to open your WhatsApp even if the phone is unlocked. Read more about how to activate it.
