WhatsApp[1] is the most popular messaging app in the world, used by over 1.2 billion people worldwide and 200 million in India alone[2]. Despite its success, the Facebook-owned company has not become complacent and always keeps the competition on its toes by releasing new features every few weeks. 2017, of course, saw the overhauled WhatsApp Status (an aping of Snapchat), but there have been many other small updates this year that didn't get as much attention. From increased media sharing limit to video streaming, we take a look at all the new WhatsApp features released this year alone. While going down this memory lane, we’ve ranked features in the order that we feel made the most impact (or will make, if in beta) in user experience.
1. Delete for Everyone
WhatsApp in October made the Delete for Everyone feature live for all users[3], the biggest change to chats on the platform since the blue ticks were introduced. As the name suggests, this feature allows a sender to delete messages they had already sent, in individual chats as well as group chats. Text messages, images, videos, files etc. can be recalled using this feature, which is found when you delete a message and selecting the Delete for Everyone option. The message on the sender as well as recipient's sides will be replaced with "This message was deleted." However, a third-party app with access to notifications can retrieve sent messages that have been deleted[4].
2. New revamped Snapchat-like Status feature
Perhaps, one of the most important updates this year, the new Status feature was rolled out to all users globally[5] in February. The new WhatsApp Status feature replaced...