If you’ve been browsing Facebook, you might have noticed that over the past several months or so, your friends have been posting text-based status updates that features a colored (or textured) background, which we guess ultimately helps these status messages to stand out if you’re looking to make them more visible.
Now it looks like in an update to WhatsApp, a similar feature can also be found. Users will be able to post text-only statuses and also choose to add a colored background to make them pop, as well as add links if they want to share something. This was confirmed by a WhatsApp spokesperson to the folks at VentureBeat.
However if you don’t see the feature yet, there’s a good chance that it has yet to make its way to you, so worry not as it should arrive soon enough. These changes will be applicable to both the iOS and Android versions of WhatsApp at the same time, so it’s not as though either platform will be getting the feature first. This change also follows on the heels of the Status feature now being supported by WhatsApp for the web.
We’re not sure if these changes will encourage WhatsApp users to use the Status feature (which doesn’t seem quite as popular compared to Instagram’s Stories), but we guess only time will tell.