WhatsApp will allow setting voice recordings as status messages

WhatsApp already allows inserting emoji and GIF animations into status messages. So why would it seem more awkward to replace these with audio recordings, in which users can better express their moods, or their dissatisfaction with certain people in their contact list.

The concept has been developed in the Facebook network, where users can share so-called “ephemeral stories”, including any combination of pictures, videos and text messages. No matter how uninspiring they are chosen, they all automatically disappear the next day, with the social network using this argument to encourage as many posts as possible to be shared, regardless of their quality.

Very well received, the Stories concept is widely used on Instagram and Facebook, so why wouldn’t it work on Meta’s other owned platform, Instagram. The problem is that, unlike Instagram or Facebook, WhatsApp is by definition an instant messaging platform, so the chances of an equivalent WhatsApp Stories feature succeeding are questionable at best.

We can only surmise how the new status messages, voicemails, would work. Most likely, the addition of a text description will still be mandatory, with genuinely interested users simply being enticed to listen to the audio message.

Meta notes that voice messages posted in this way will be transmitted exclusively over end-to-end encrypted connections, providing protection against eavesdropping by anyone other than those in the contact list.

WhatsApp is not the only platform experimenting with voice posts. Twitter has been testing the option to post voice tweets on iOS for some time, but the feature is not yet available globally.

Amusingly, future audio status messages are being tested with an upper limit of 4 minutes of recording, which can’t even be accessed with the beta version of the app, with WhatsApp only experimenting with the feature in restricted skies.