A strike against Snapchat? WhatsApp introduces new time limited feature, 'Status'

This is trending on Nigerian Twitter at the moment. WhatsApp has a new feature called Status, which is available to all users, iOS and Android. It allows people to update their statuses with photos, videos and more. These updates will disappear after 24 hours.

The icon for Status is located between ‘Chats’ and ‘Calls’ on the navigation bar of your WhatsApp home-screen (as seen above). Once your Status is created, you can control who sees it by specifying so in your privacy settings. You can also discover which of your contacts has viewed your Status on a ‘view counter’ at the bottom of the screen.


WhatsApp currently has over 1 billion monthly users and hosts a daily thoroughfare of about 60 billion messages. "By milking its potential for multimedia usage, WhatsApp can augment itself from a functional messaging tool to a platform that users go to for entertainment."

It opens up fresh avenues for monetisation, which can help offset the opportunity cost of the scrapping of its earlier $1 nominal fee.

Looks like Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, is still bent on beating Snapchat at their game.