TECH TUESDAY: THINGS WILL NEVER BE THE SAME
That’s just the way it is, things will never be the same….. These are famous lyrics from Tupac’s song Changes. Changes are definitely the order of the day (something Nigerians and Americans can relate to all too well). The wind of change is blowing through, and our technology sector ain’t left out.
Say goodbye to the WhatsApp you used to know. Yep, that simple go-to instant messaging app is dead and gone. Say hello to the new “instagram/facebook/snapchat” rolled up in one instant messaging social media app. (whatever that is).
By now you must have noticed a few changes on your WhatsApp, the Facebook Owned App has joined the list of private messaging apps hopping on the social media train. They have been creeping it on us slowly; it started with the options to send GIFs, images and videos and then on February 24th which was their eight anniversary they rolled out the upgraded model to all subscribers.
The new and improved WhatsApp (the jury is still out on this one) intends to adopt a heavy content sharing style similar to Snapchat, (Facebook did try to buy Snapchat but the deal fell through, so go figure).
NEW FEATURES:
Like the “status update” on their sister company Facebook, WhatsApp users can now upload images and videos as their WhatsApp status as opposed to the previous single line status limited to only 140 words. The downside of this is that it all disappears after 24 hours. Sounds familiar? Yea it’s exactly like the Snapchat stories which Instagram adopted (Insta Stories).
The improved feature lets you share snippets of your everyday life to your contacts. There’s also a new two step log in verification security update as well.
WhatsApp isn’t the only app making changes, its sister company Instagram also rolled out a new feature called “Carousel”. The carousel lets you upload as many as ten photographs in one post. This helps solve the issue of which perfect picture to post. It also saves you from flooding your timeline. This updated feature is great in that it allows users to share not just one snapshot of your life, but many snapshots as a larger illustration of your life’s bigger moments. This trend started with the Instastory feature (quite similar to snapcaht stories) which allows users to put together a slideshow of their favorite images which can only be viewed for a brief amount of time. The carousel feature has something resembling galleries to do that, too. The gallery-type posts are different than Stories in many ways, the obvious being they don’t vanish like the instastories do. But functionally, they’re quite similar, stringing your photos and videos together into something more like a narrative than a single image.
How is your experience with the updated features going? Do you find it annoying, do you think it’s necessary or would you rather have the previous version? Share your thoughts with us in the comment section.
