{"id":323161,"date":"2019-06-13T08:22:44","date_gmt":"2019-06-13T06:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=323161"},"modified":"2019-06-13T08:22:44","modified_gmt":"2019-06-13T06:22:44","slug":"big-changes-coming-to-whatsapp-including-adverts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/323161\/big-changes-coming-to-whatsapp-including-adverts\/","title":{"rendered":"Big changes coming to WhatsApp – including adverts"},"content":{"rendered":"

WhatsApp will be clamping down on spam and will soon start blocking messages sent out by businesses.<\/p>\n

The company said<\/a> <\/strong>that from 7 December 2019, it will also be taking legal action against those who are engaged automated or bulk messaging through the platform, and will be banning accounts which use the messaging service for non-personal use.<\/p>\n

“This serves as notice that we will take legal action against companies for which we only have off-platform evidence of abuse if that abuse continues beyond 7 December 2019, or if those companies are linked to on-platform evidence of abuse before that date,” the company said.<\/p>\n

“We will continue to provide capabilities to help businesses communicate with their customers.”<\/p>\n

The move to limit spammers is just one of a number of changes that the popular messaging app is looking to introduce. Some of the other major changes are outlined below.<\/p>\n

\n

Adverts<\/strong><\/p>\n

Facebook will begin publishing<\/a> <\/strong>adverts on WhatsApp\u2019s status page starting in 2020, according to a tweet by an attendee of a Facebook Marketing Summit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatsApp will bring Stories Ads in its status product in 2020,\u201d the tweet said, showing the presentation which confirmed the launch date.<\/p>\n

WhatsApp vice president Chris Daniels told journalists in October 2018 that adverts within the Status feature would be the \u201cprimary monetisation mode for the company\u201d.<\/p>\n

This latest development means that previous reports suggesting that adverts could come to WhatsApp as soon as 2019 appear to be incorrect.<\/p>\n

WhatsApp will join fellow Facebook-owned social media platform Instagram in running adverts through its Status feature.<\/p>\n

Facebook also recently announced that it would be implementing business catalogues within WhatsApp.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith catalogues, businesses can showcase their goods so people can easily discover them,\u201d said Facebook.<\/p>\n

\n

Add contacts through QR and share Facebook statuses<\/strong><\/p>\n

WaBetaInfo reports that WhatsApp<\/a> <\/strong>is currently working to implement a new feature which will allow users to share their status updates to Facebook.<\/p>\n

Once this feature is added, users who have Facebook installed on their smartphone and post a status update on WhatsApp will be presented with an \u201cAdd to Facebook Story\u201d option.<\/p>\n

Selecting this option will redirect you to Facebook to share your story on the social media platform. This feature will not automatically share any statuses, requiring manual authorisation from the user.<\/p>\n

WhatsApp is also reportedly working on the ability to add contacts by scanning an in-app QR code on their device, the report stated.<\/p>\n

No release date for these new features has been announced.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: New Huawei phones won\u2019t come with Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A number of big changes are coming to WhatsApp in the next few months. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":245533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[26,2118],"class_list":["post-323161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-headline","tag-whatsapp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323161"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":323183,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323161\/revisions\/323183"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}