WhatsApp tests its own Snapchat Stories clone

If this ever make its way out of testing, another Facebook-owned app will be getting the Snapchat Stories treatment. WhatsApp is testing what it calls Status, a new feature that will let you share photos and videos you can overlay with emojis and text and it stays up for 24 hours. According to BGR India, the feature is currently available to registered public beta testers of the app using rooted Android or iOS devices.

The app on Android gets a new Status tab between the Chats and Calls tabs. It doesn’t take over your ability to share a status message on the service. What it does is create a new channel for users to share visual content with their contacts. At the moment it doesn’t allow users to manually delete Status updates after they’ve been shared. And they can’t be set to have longer or shorter lifespan online. You can specify which contacts can get the updates. This feature seems to be in line with Mark Zuckerberg’s push to prioritize video content as they try to drive video ad revenue. It’s something that WhatsApp can now take advantage of as it changed its privacy policy to basically allow business to show ads to users. Now, we have to see if this makes it out of beta.

Source: TechCrunch