WhatsApp Inc, the popular messaging app is set to introduce four new features in 2020.
The Facebook-owned platform has over 1 billion users across the world from various continents.
Here is a list of the four new features coming to WhatsApp in 2020;
- Dark theme/mode: According to the independent.co.uk, the Facebook-owned messaging app has been teasing the dark theme for months. However, WaBetaInfo, a website that follows developments with the beta version pf the app, has reported that the dark theme update is ready for the android version of WhatsApp.
- Disappearing messages: This feature allows users to automatically delete messages after a stipulated period in both group chats and personal direct conversations. With this, The Guardian reports that users will be able to set the messages to be deleted automatically after an hour, a day, a week, a month or a year.
- Ads: The platform plans to start inserting promos into WhatsApp Status posts from 2020. this was repeatedly revealed at the 2019 Facebook Marketing Summit in the Netherlands. WaBetaInfo describes the ads as”status advertisements”. WhatsApp said; ‘they won’t be invasive and they will appear very rarely between a lot of status updates. This feature is currently available on WhatsApp’s sister-app ‘Instagram’.
- Reverse Image Search: As the most popular messaging app across Africa, Whatsapp has been flagged as a major medium of choice for spreading fake news. A recent report by the Center for Democracy and Development and the University of Birmingham on Whatsapp’s role during Nigeria’s February elections showed that parents and grandparents as the ‘biggest sharers’ of misinformation. The platform plans to fight the spread of fake news with a new feature called the reverse image search tool. This lets you figure out the original sender of any image.
