WhatsApp is soon going to introduce a Live Status feature. And this feature is going to fundamentally change how we interact with the app.
Live Status is going to be similar to “Stories” on Snapchat or Instagram.
Forbes explains —
“WhatsApp’s new Status feature, being rolled out on Monday, will let users share photos, GIFs or videos overlaid with drawings, emojis and a caption that will be visible to selected friends for 24 hours, before disappearing.”
UI changes
There will be major design changes that will accommodate this new feature.
- A new tab will appear between “Chat” and “Calls” for Live Status.
- You can choose who sees the status you post. By default, all your contacts can see them, just like your profile picture now.
- Status updates will remain live for 24 hours. After that, they will disappear.
There has been a lot of publicity surrounding the new feature.It’s clear that Facebook is doing everything it can to make sure that you don’t miss out on the feature. It wants each and everyone to be using this feature.
But why? Why is Facebook so determined to shove it down our throats? There have been other major updates in WhatsApp, but none of them has gotten as much attention as this.
So what’s so special about Live Status? Two words —
Passive Consumption
This new feature is part of a larger sales technique that Facebook has epitomised. It’s called Passive Consumption.
On platforms like Facebook and Instagram, we don’t go searching for information. There’s no goal in mind for us, except scrolling through the newsfeed. We just swipe through the screen and consume whatever is fed to us.
Live Status will do the same with WhatsApp.
We are now going to open WhatsApp and look at people’s Live Status all day long. And somewhere between all those full-screen live status updates, there will be advertisements. Advertisements that we didn’t ask for, that we didn’t want, and that we will end up seeing anyway.
