This is according to a recent tweet by @WABetaInfo in which it appears that in the latest WhatsApp beta, it has been discovered that status updates will soon come with alerts. This means that whenever a contact updates/changes their status, you’ll be notified. This might be useful to let people know that you’re in a meeting, or when you’re free to talk, or when you’re driving, and so on.
That being said, we get that it could also become rather annoying because let’s face it, some people might change their status several times a day and getting alets on top of everything else could be rather disruptive, so the good news is that these alerts can be muted or unmuted.
According to @WABetaInfo, it seems that it will be muted by default, so you’ll have to manually turn it on if you’d like to receive these alerts. No word on when we can expect this update to be pushed out, but it might be a feature that some users might appreciate.