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From GIF search to ‘Status’, here are 5 features that WhatsApp introduced in 2017

Do you know you can share funny GIFs with your friends?

Life in 2017 has been a roller-coaster ride for the Facebook-owned social messaging service, WhatsApp. The company has introduced a number of updates to its platform in a past couple of months. While some of them were received with open arms, others faced harsh criticism and backlash. Despite some setbacks, the company has kept the waggon going and introduced new features.

WhatsApp recently introduced a new feature allowing the users to share multiple contacts at once not only in individual chat but also in the group chats. The good part about the upcoming update is that all the shared contacts appear in a single box, on opening which you can select which contact you want to save on your smartphone. Though the feature is being tested on the beta version of WhatsApp for Android and the company is expected to roll out the feature for everyone soon.

Meanwhile, take a look at the features that WhatsApp introduced this year:

Status feature: This feature allows the users to share 24-hour disappearing status with their contacts and receive replies on the same. Users can even share their status with specific people by changing their privacy settings. The interesting fact about this feature is that users can delete their status from the contacts’ smartphones by deleting their status.

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About feature: WhatsApp’s ‘Status’ feature created a wave of discontent among the users as it replaced the traditional one-liner status with disappearing status updates. Following requests by users across the globe, the company re-introduced the old status feature as ‘About’ feature.

GIF Search: Emoticons are old way of sharing reactions. Though they are easy to use, using the same repeatedly can often get monotonous. WhatsApp integrated GIF search on its platform, allowing users to share GIFs from Giphy and Tenor (Scooby Doo and Barney Gifs are so fetch!).

ALSO READ: Now track your friends in real-time on WhatsApp. Know how!

Image sharing limit: Prior to this update, the users could share only 10 images at a time. To make image sharing more hassle free, the company increased this limit allowing users to share up to 30 images at a time (Yay!).

Live location tracking: Up until now the only way users would know if a contact had been active was by looking at the ‘last seen’ of their contact. However, this is about to change as the company is planning to introduce live location tracking on its platform. Though the feature is still in the beta testing phase, it would allow users to track location of their friends (Isn’t this creepy or what?!).