Dubai Times All About Dubai
WhatsApp plans to add voicemail, call-back options and ZIP file sharing support. The chat service has been introducing new services in the last few months – first it was the introduction of end-to-end chat encryption, followed by its document exchange feature.
The Facebook-owned chat service has slowly been evolving its original service to become a multi-functional service for its users.
Earlier this year, the service’s nominal 99c annual fee, which wasn’t ever really recouped, was shelved, meaning it’s ‘free’ for 1bn users. As with any Facebook-owned service, though, you’re probably doing the work for the company without realising it.
At the time, WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum said 2016 would be a big year for the company’s upgrades, intimating financial tools will be added to some degree.
“Starting this year, we will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organisations that you want to hear from,” he said. “That could mean communicating with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent, or with an airline about a delayed flight.
It has added formatting tools lately, too, but there are still many elements of WhatsApp, tricks and tips to improve the service that you may not have heard of before. Check some of them out here.
Facebook agreed to acquire Whatsapp in 2014 for an estimated $19bn. Koum founded WhatsApp with Brian Acton, whom he got to know when they both worked at Yahoo.
WhatsApp has already established the voice over internet protocol (VoIP) aspect with its service, however it now plans to expand the feature with call-back and voicemail support, ensuring its active users never miss a call again.
WhatsApp will be adding support for sending and receiving pdf files apart from Docs, Sheets, and Slides files. This will allow users to exchange heavy files via WhatsApp.
WhatsApp has yet to officially confirm these updates.
Earlier this month, WhatsApp announced it had strengthened the default encryption setting on its service, meaning messages sent will now only be accessible to the sender and recipient.
“The idea is simple: when you send a message, the only person who can read it is the person or group chat that you send that message to. No one can see inside that message,” WhatsApp said in a blog post announcing the update. “Not cyber-criminals. Not hackers. Not oppressive regimes. Not even us.
Although WhatsApp calls are not being allowed in the UAE, even as more and more companies are embracing VoIP calls, UAE telecoms du and Etisalat face some pressure to allow WhatsApp calls. During a recent meeting of the Federal National Council (FNC) a member called the UAE’s ban on voice calls via apps an “international embarrassment”.
However, Hamad Al Mansouri, director-general of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, countered that VoIP services are blocked in the UAE due to cyber-crime concerns and state security issues and would continue to be blocked.
