WhatsApp development team is having a rough sea 2021. And it is that, without a doubt, this is being the most prolific year in terms of testing new functions for the service. You can review the list of the latest news that we have published about it, and you will see that only this year, they may have added, or at least tested, more functions than we have been able to see in the set of not a few of the previous years .
It is also true that it has been a difficult year for WhatsApp. The new terms, announced at the beginning of the year, have not stopped spinning, and even when it seemed that they had passed away, at the beginning of the month we knew that they were reappearing on the horizon. As a result of this controversy, throughout the year we have not stopped hearing about users who have decided to leave WhatsApp, making the leap to Telegram and other services.
Thus, and although this is just a theory, it makes all the sense in the world to think that this increase in the sum of new functions not only has to do with improving its competitiveness with other services, but also for cover up some of the huge volume of noise that has been produced by the terms of use. In any case, be that as it may, users who have decided to stay on WhatsApp will be able to enjoy all these new functions, which is always appreciated.
And the latest news in this regard, I admit that it generates mixed feelings in me. As we can read in Digital Trends, WhatsApp is working on the function so that it is possible to react to messages. Specifically, we are talking about the possibility of adding an emote to a message that we have received in the context of a conversation, in the same way that it is possible to do it on Facebook with reactions.
And why does it give me mixed feelings? Well because, on the one hand, I think reactions are a comfortable and aseptic way of expressing emotions which, perhaps, the other party wishes to see with a little more development. For example, if I tell a friend something that worries me or saddens me in this way, adding a sad face to my message as the only answer will frankly seem terribly insufficient. And I am concerned that this is the path that interpersonal communication travels.
However, and especially since I am a regular user of Discord, I have become used to using precisely the same type of reactions that WhatsApp is now testing. And I like themI think they offer a way of giving a first “answer” that I then develop when necessary. And they are also a good option when you simply want to react to a funny comment, that does not give for more, with a smile.
