WhatsApp adding ‘like’ and ‘mark as unread’ buttons?

13 Jul 2015

Reports are emerging that WhatsApp is taking a leaf out of its owner, Facebook’s… book, with an upcoming inclusion of a ‘like’ button for images, and a ‘mark as unread’ button, too.

On Twitter, Ilhan Pektas, who is believed to be a WhatsApp beta tester, said: “Like button for divided images on WhatsApp”, which points to a possibility of liking friends’ profile images, or perhaps even liking images in group chats.

The latter sounds a bit weird and doesn’t seem to serve any purpose, but everyone loves a like button, right?

The ‘mark as unread’ feature will presumably undo that little blue double tick that appears when a message you sent is read by the person you sent it to. This seems a logical inclusion, however, again, it’s unclear how it will work.

Meanwhile, WhatsApp Web has received a couple of improvements. For those who are understandably unaware of WhatsApp Web, it’s a browser platform for the messaging service.

Until now it was pretty limited in what it could do, but updates mean you can alter your image and change your profile status on there.

These changes were discovered by Android Police, although it’s unclear when they were actually implemented.

Main image via Shutterstock

Gordon Hunt was a journalist with Silicon Republic

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