WhatsApp often adds a few new updates into the mix to keep users engaged with its product. The messaging platform is actually bringing two rather exciting new features that have the potential to really increase the amount of time that users spend on the platform and also shows the influence that certain competitors might be having on the platform as well.
As per WABI, the first of these two updates will change the way people interact with voice notes. Voice messaging has become a really important part of how people communicate with each other, but up until this point the user interface was rather frustrating to deal with. The first change that is coming to this involves changing the straight line into a wave form which can help people get a sense of how urgent a voice note might be.
Higher wave forms would indicate a louder volume which can give you a hint about what the wave form might just end up being about. What’s more is that this wave form will also have a dot in it that you can use to scroll forwards and backwards. This is especially useful in situations where you might not have heard something and you want to rewind a bit to hear it again without having to go all the way to the very beginning of the voice note and hear the whole thing again.
The second update is quite different because it involves emoji reactions to messages. This is a feature that was originated in Facebook Messenger and competitors such as Discord managed to take it to a whole other level by monetizing certain emojis. While WhatsApp probably won’t monetize emojis since this wouldn’t be in line with how it has operated over the past few years, the prevalence of message reactions is clearly something that is influencing it because these reactions were a long time coming.
These emoji reactions are going to bring a level of personalization to conversations on the platform. Many real life conversations involve us reacting to the things that people say, and bringing this into text based communication is probably going to bring a lot of advantages to it as well. All in all these changes are most likely going to be somewhat well received because they have the potential to vastly improve the overall user experience in ways that they would appreciate quite a lot due to the previous problems that they might have had with WhatsApp.
Read next: Researchers Show Privacy Policies Are Too Complex for Some Age Groups to Understand
As per WABI, the first of these two updates will change the way people interact with voice notes. Voice messaging has become a really important part of how people communicate with each other, but up until this point the user interface was rather frustrating to deal with. The first change that is coming to this involves changing the straight line into a wave form which can help people get a sense of how urgent a voice note might be.
Higher wave forms would indicate a louder volume which can give you a hint about what the wave form might just end up being about. What’s more is that this wave form will also have a dot in it that you can use to scroll forwards and backwards. This is especially useful in situations where you might not have heard something and you want to rewind a bit to hear it again without having to go all the way to the very beginning of the voice note and hear the whole thing again.
The second update is quite different because it involves emoji reactions to messages. This is a feature that was originated in Facebook Messenger and competitors such as Discord managed to take it to a whole other level by monetizing certain emojis. While WhatsApp probably won’t monetize emojis since this wouldn’t be in line with how it has operated over the past few years, the prevalence of message reactions is clearly something that is influencing it because these reactions were a long time coming.
These emoji reactions are going to bring a level of personalization to conversations on the platform. Many real life conversations involve us reacting to the things that people say, and bringing this into text based communication is probably going to bring a lot of advantages to it as well. All in all these changes are most likely going to be somewhat well received because they have the potential to vastly improve the overall user experience in ways that they would appreciate quite a lot due to the previous problems that they might have had with WhatsApp.
Read next: Researchers Show Privacy Policies Are Too Complex for Some Age Groups to Understand
