{"id":349543,"date":"2019-10-29T08:13:10","date_gmt":"2019-10-29T06:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=349543"},"modified":"2019-10-29T08:24:51","modified_gmt":"2019-10-29T06:24:51","slug":"big-changes-coming-to-whatsapp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/349543\/big-changes-coming-to-whatsapp\/","title":{"rendered":"Big changes coming to WhatsApp"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WhatsApp is expanding its new group privacy and invite settings to a number of additional countries, reports <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/wabetainfo.com\/whatsapp-is-rolling-out-the-group-privacy-settings-including-blacklist\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">WABetaInfo<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>First announced in April 2019, the new features will give users more control over the group messages they receive.<\/p>\n<p>In a new settings menu dedicated to groups, users will be able to select one of three options:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Nobody<\/li>\n<li>My Contacts<\/li>\n<li>Everyone<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8220;(The) &#8216;Nobody&#8217; setting means you&#8217;ll have to approve joining every group to which you&#8217;re invited, and &#8216;My Contacts&#8217; means only users you have in your address book can add you to groups.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In those cases, the person adding you to a group will be prompted to send a private invite through an individual chat, giving you the choice of joining the group. You&#8217;ll have three days to accept the invite before it expires,&#8221; WhatsApp said.<\/p>\n<p>The new group privacy setting is just one of a number of changes that the popular messaging app is looking to introduce.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the other major changes are outlined below.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Adverts<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Facebook will begin\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/307610-whatsapp-status-adverts-coming-next-year.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">publishing<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>adverts on WhatsApp\u2019s status page starting in 2020, according to a tweet by an attendee of a Facebook Marketing Summit earlier this year.<\/p>\n<p>\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<p>This latest development means that previous reports suggesting that adverts could come to WhatsApp as soon as 2019 appear to be incorrect.<\/p>\n<p>WhatsApp will join fellow Facebook-owned social media platform Instagram in running adverts through its Status feature.<\/p>\n<p>Facebook also recently announced that it would be implementing business catalogues within WhatsApp.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith catalogues, businesses can showcase their goods so people can easily discover them,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>New themes\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>WhatsApp is developing a dark mode for its Android application, alongside a new settings menu focusing on themes.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wabetainfo.com\/whatsapp-beta-for-android-2-19-282-whats-new\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>WABetaInfo<\/strong><\/a> reported that this section will include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Light theme: The standard white theme that is the current default for WhatsApp;<\/li>\n<li>Dark theme: Adopts blue and black night colours instead;<\/li>\n<li>System default: WhatsApp identifies the theme used by your Android system (if light or dark), and sets it in WhatsApp automatically.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When System Default is selected, WhatsApp will automatically detect which theme is used by your Android operating system and set the same theme within the application.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Disappearing messages<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>WhatsApp is currently <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/wabetainfo.com\/whatsapp-beta-for-android-2-19-275-whats-new\/\">working<\/a> <\/strong>on a\u00a0 &#8216;disappearing messages&#8217; feature similar to rival messaging apps.<\/p>\n<p>When the disappearing messages setting is turned on for a chat, all messages sent by participants will be removed after a pre-defined interval.<\/p>\n<p>The current implementation of this functionality in the Android beta version of WhatsApp allows messages to be automatically deleted from a chat after either five seconds or one hour.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/345486\/sending-these-types-of-whatsapp-messages-could-soon-land-you-in-jail-in-south-africa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sending these types of WhatsApp messages could soon land you in jail in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WhatsApp is expanding its new group privacy and invite settings to a number of additional countries, reports WABetaInfo.<\/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-349543","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\/349543","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=349543"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":349575,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349543\/revisions\/349575"}],"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=349543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}