WhatsApp is testing a new feature that allows users to share their WhatsApp Status with other apps and, perhaps more notably, Facebook.
WhatsApp Status – also known as WhatsApp Stories – is the app’s equivalent of Facebook or Instagram Stories, allowing users to share text, photos, videos and GIFs that disappear after 24 hours. Up until now, users could also send their status updates to their contacts, but a new test unveiled this week also gives them the ability to share Statuses to Facebook Stories, and a bunch of other apps like Instagram, Gmail, Google photos, and others.
If you think that this means WhatsApp is linking to Facebook, that would be wrong. At least according to a WhatsApp spokesperson who told the Verge that the app is “not doing anything to link your accounts on the two services. Instead, it’s making use of the same iOS, and Android data-sharing APIs as every other app, meaning data is transferred between the apps on-device.”
The new feature appears as part of the WhatsApp beta program.
Launched back in 2017, Status has grown beyond 500 million daily users and is the first place in the app that Facebook will start showing ads in 2020. Could this be a first step towards bringing all Facebook-family apps closer together? We’ll see.
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