I’m honestly sort of intrigued by the thought process that went on behind such a feature and its implementation. Were the developers at any point thinking of social media platforms such as Clubhouse, or the heavy push that Twitter has been driving towards Spaces? I’m not saying that anything audio-based on a social media site has to be influenced by such, but I would find it just a little bit funny if WhatsApp and its developers decided to jump onto a bandwagon that’s very well on its way to breaking down at the side of the road. The clubhouse isn’t doing as well as it was in its heyday, with dwindling active users owing to both the feature’s novelty wearing off combined with an unfortunate number of supremacists and white power sympathizers joining the platform. Spaces are doing worse since no one wants Twitter, but with a podcast, add-on attached. In all honesty, we as a society probably went down the wrong road the literal second that podcasts become this commercialized.
At any rate, WhatsApp’s audio statuses don’t seem to be as inspired by Clubhouse since they’re not live and are probably limited to some extent by time constraints. Rarely do individuals record voice messages on the messaging social media platform that last literal hours; allow me to also mention that this is not a concrete statement, as I’m sure at least one individual out there has tried this. Coming back to the point, this is essentially what the new feature is: voice messages can now be added to one’s status. This new addition has been identified by WABetaInfo as a part of the 2.22.21.5 update but was first heard of in the earlier 2.22.16.3 update. However, there was no interface provided, so I’m counting the former update as its first official sighting.
Since the feature is currently under development, users can’t freely access the beta either. WAB did, however, get their hands on the current iteration, and the interface isn’t anything particularly new. It entirely utilizes the text-based status update screen, and simply adds a button for voice recording at the bottom. Much like a typical WhatsApp voice message, all one has to do to record is press on it and start speaking. However, since the feature is currently under development with no release date on site, the result may end up looking markedly different than what we have on our hands.
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