Africa: WhatsApp Celebrates 8th Birthday With New 'Status' Functionality

24 February 2017
allAfrica.com
By Andre van Wyk

Instant messaging service WhatsApp has announced that it will reconfigure the status feature to coincide with the service's 8th birthday on 24 February. According to company founder Jan Koum, users will be able to update their status with photos and videos for their contacts to view.

Koum assured users that the function, which was previously only available in text form, will retain the end-to-end encryption present throughout the rest of the messaging service. The intent to expand status functionality began in 2009 following the inception of WhatsApp, which initially only offered status updates as a means for user interaction before messaging was added.

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