One of the most popular messaging apps, WhatsApp, is used by more than a billion people around the world. With such a large userbase, it’s only natural to add new features and remain competitive in the market.
The Facebook-owned application has been introducing features that are reminiscent of Snapchat. Initially, the application added a Snapchat story-like feature dubbed ‘WhatsApp status’ where users could share videos and pictures that would disappear after 24 hours.
Now, the app is taking another page out of Snapchat’s book with self destructing or ‘Disappearing messages’. This new feature will allow your messages to self-destruct after a set period of time. It was first discovered by WABetaInfo in version 2.19.275 of the Android app.
Disappearing messages can be very useful, especially while sending out a sensitive piece of information that the users don’t want to be permanently available. However, currently, the expiration time options are 5 seconds and 1-hour. There is no other option available.
Just like Snapchat, users can head into chat settings to set a predefined expiry time for the messages.
In the beta version, the feature is only available for group chats, however, we do believe the final version will be rolled out for personal as well as group chats.
The same feature was originally introduced by Telegram, a cloud-based instant messaging app, and later by Gmail where users could send messages with an expiry date using the confidential mode.
Since the feature is in early stages (which means WhatsApp is still working on it) we don’t have any details regarding the global or regional rollout.
Watch this space for more on WhatsApp.