WhatsApp continues to dominate the instant messaging space in South Africa, and is ubiquitous across most people\u2019s smartphones.<\/p>\n
However, there are other\u00a0messaging apps<\/a><\/strong> which offer some valuable features which are currently unavailable on WhatsApp.<\/p>\n These features are popular with users and are likely to improve customer experience – making them options WhatsApp may consider in the future.<\/p>\n Here are five features that WhatsApp could add to its platform to improve its offering.<\/p>\n A feature WhatsApp users have been wanting for years is the ability to make themselves invisible to other users.<\/p>\n Users can currently hide their “last seen” time, and they can also disable “read recipients” – so that WhatsApp doesn’t display a blue tick when they have read someone’s message.<\/p>\n However, users cannot hide when they are actually online – unlike other popular messaging platforms such as Telegram and Facebook Messenger.<\/p>\n Going invisible can be useful if users don’t want someone to know that they’re aware they’ve received a message.<\/p>\n For years, email clients have offered the option of setting up automated “away” responses for when users are on holiday or off sick.<\/p>\n A WhatsApp auto-response message would allow users to inform those who send them messages if they\u2019re unable to read or respond to messages.<\/p>\n This could be helpful if they’re going to be in an area without signal, or if they just don’t want to be disturbed.<\/p>\n Snapchat has a great feature which prevents users from taking screenshots of shared images and videos.<\/p>\n WhatsApp messages are often intended to be private, but if the recipient’s smartphone falls into the wrong hands, taking a screenshot of messages is an easy way to expose this information to a greater audience.<\/p>\n Implementing a similar functionality to Snapchat\u2019s screenshot-blocking technology would allow WhatsApp users to feel more comfortable in their private chats.<\/p>\n Another privacy-focused feature that WhatsApp could consider is self-destructing messages.<\/p>\n Telegram, one of the more popular competitors to WhatsApp, offers this feature \u2013 and this is one of the app\u2019s greatest selling points.<\/p>\n It allows its users to send a message that automatically deletes itself a certain period of time after being seen.<\/p>\n This reduces the risk of having old messages containing important information being accessed through hacks \u2013 as this information will no longer be accessible on the device.<\/p>\n WhatsApp\u2019s big brother, Facebook, already provides users with daily birthday notifications.<\/p>\n This has come to many users’ aid, as it helps them to remember birthdays of friends and family that they may have otherwise forgotten.<\/p>\n It shouldn\u2019t be particularly difficult to add a birthdays feature into WhatsApp \u2013 particularly since we know that Facebook already has the feature available.<\/p>\n To allay privacy concerns, WhatsApp could make listing one\u2019s birthday an optional action, as many might not want to disclose their personal information on the platform.<\/p>\n WhatsApp continues to dominate the instant messaging space in South Africa, and it is ubiquitous across most people\u2019s smartphones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341039,"featured_media":168223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[8887,35,59537,23753,2594],"class_list":["post-310237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-software","tag-facebook-messenger","tag-headline","tag-invisible-mode","tag-telegram","tag-whatsapp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310237"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341039"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310237"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":310365,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310237\/revisions\/310365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}1. Android invisible mode<\/strong><\/h3>\n
2. Automated “away” responses<\/strong><\/h3>\n
3. Blocking screenshots<\/strong><\/h3>\n
4. Self-destructing messages<\/strong><\/h3>\n
5. Birthday notifications<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Now read: Telegram traces massive cyber attack to China<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"