Gone are the days when it could be said that the only thing that kept WhatsApp as the most used instant messaging service in the world was its seniority. And it is that yes, it is true that it was the first to achieve great popularity and that, consequently, it became the reference for many users, and it is also true that for years it gave the feeling that its managers were mired in a nap permanent, in the face of ever stronger competition.
This meant that, until about a couple of years ago, WhatsApp was the service with the fewest features in its sector, which is paradoxical considering its leading position. I mean, does it really make sense for you to get so confident that you see your rivals surpass you in almost every way (except market share), becoming a threat, and do nothing about it? We all think the same when faced with that question, and fortunately for the users of the service, someone inside Meta must have thought about it too, and acted on it.
So, we have gone from the absolute lack of activity to having news, either in the form of tests or deployments, with an almost weekly frequency. Whether it’s new functions or improvements to existing ones, their managers also have an interesting advantage over their rivals, and that is that they don’t have to go crazy thinking about what else to add… just look at the competition and replicate their functions. Yes, it is true that it has also experimented with functions that are new to its sector, but it is undeniable, and understandable, that its eyes regularly fall on its competitors.
The latest news, and also the latest example of what I was commenting on, we find in the ad posted by Mark Zuckerberg himself on Facebook, WhatsApp has started rolling out the video messaging featuresomething that has been present in other services such as Telegram for quite some time, and which is an interesting alternative to text notes for those users who wish to share more context in this type of communication.
Although the deployment of this function has already begun, it seems that it will be carried out progressively, that is, that it will still take a few weeks until it is available to all users. It is not clear, furthermore, whether it will be necessary to update the WhatsApp app, but it seems most likely, since to use this function a change has been introduced in the interface, specifically in the drop-down that is shown when the microphone icon is held down in conversations.
