To Help Promote Social Distancing, WhatsApp Launches Coronavirus-Themed Stickers

WhatsApp 'Together at Home' sticker

The novel 'COVID-19' coronavirus is affecting the world in a bad way. With the pandemic yet to be over, people are urged to stay at home, and work from home.

This situation makes people rely more on technology for communications, more than ever before. And when speaking of communications through the internet, WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app.

It was back in 2018 that WhatsApp introduced the stickers. It was late on its approach, but nevertheless, the feature quickly got its traction.

Stickers are known to offer a more engaging, and also a fun way for users to express themselves on the platform, without having to use emojis.

And here, the company partnered with the World Health Organization (WHO), and launched a sticker pack it calls “Together at Home”.

The sticker pack contains a number of suitable stickers to reflect the coronavirus-induced working and living situations, including things like video chatting, indoor exercising, working from home, to washing hands and more.

According to WhatsApp on its blog post:

"We’re excited to work with The World Health Organization to launch the 'Together at Home' sticker pack that will help people stay connected throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Stickers like these can be funny, educational and universal, breaking through language, age, and other barriers."

"We hope people enjoy using these stickers to check-in on loved ones, particularly those that are feeling isolated, alone, and scared."

Available on iOS and Android, WhatsApp called the stickers "universal" because they’re available in ten languages. These languages are: Arabic, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish.

WhatsApp coronavirus-themed stickers

WhatsApp and WHO hope that the stickers can encourage users to stay at home and help stop the spread of this deadly coronavirus disease.

Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, is seeing a massive uptick in usage, to an extent that it was facing a possible meltdown, that according to founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Coping with the surge of usage has made Facebook to struggle, considering that it's a challenge for the tech giant to maintain stability when most of its employees are working from home.

With the WhatsApp's 'Together at Home' sticker pack, Facebook is expecting the stickers to be a good way for its users to communicate the importance of staying at home.

Billions of stickers are sent every single day on WhatsApp. And during this pandemic that has claimed many lives and left many others live in isolation, the additional pictorial forms should help users express their feelings better.

Previously, WhatsApp also raised the limit of group audio and video calls from four to eight participants.

Published: 
23/04/2020