WhatsApp was born as a simple and easy-to-use messaging app. But later, it experienced numerous updates that made it more complex.
With the 'Status' feature for example. The feature which was rolled out back in 2017, was one milestone that made WhatsApp not anymore a straightforward app.
And in what appears to be WhatsApp in showcasing Facebook as its owner, the messaging app starts allowing its users to share their Status updates to Facebook Stories as well as Instagram Stories.
.
To do this, users have a new sharing option under their Status, which says 'Share as Facebook Story'.
This feature however, does not limit users to share their Status with Facebook, as it also allows users to share Status on Gmail and Google Photos as well. But to make WhatsApp Status sharing work on third-party apps that aren't Facebook's, users need to first link WhatsApp to their respective third-parties' accounts.
In other words, this feature allows users of WhatsApp to share their Status on Facebook, Instagram, or third-parties, without having to share it separately.
The feature was first spotted back in June 2019, when WhatsApp began testing it to a number of users.
While this is certainly a convenient for WhatsApp users, users should remember that all Status updates on WhatsApp are end-to-end encrypted. However, once users share their Status updates on Facebook, Instagram or any other platform, they will lose that extra layer of protection that WhatsApp provides.
This was confirmed by a WhatsApp spokesperson, saying that:
In addition to the Share to Facebook Story button, a Share to Facebook option allows users to share their existing WhatsApp Status updates to Facebook Story.
This option is only visible when users tap on the 'My Status' on WhatsApp, and hit the 'More' button next to the status update that they want to share on Facebook.
"On Android and iPhone, you have the option to share your WhatsApp status updates to Facebook Stories and other apps," the company wrote on its updated FAQ page. It also underlines that the feature is only available if users have Facebook for Android, Facebook Lite for Android, or Facebook for iOS installed on their device.
And just like any Stories, WhatsApp's shared Status Stories can contain images, text and videos, and will disappear after 24 hours.
The move is part of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's plan to create a unified app combining WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, to let over 2.6 billion users communicate with each other cross-apps in the foreseeable future.
The move could let the social networking giant create higher user engagement to boast to its advertisers, thus, ramping up its advertising revenue at a time when growth has slowed down.
But at the same time, this certainly makes WhatsApp more complicated, and far from its original intention. As numerous reports have said, this may have been the cause of WhatsApp founder Jan Koum to leave Facebook in 2018.