According to reports by Venture Beat, Facebook-owned social messaging platform, WhatsApp Inc. last week on Friday revealed that New Year’s Eve saw 63 billion messages being sent globally. Of the 63 billion messages sent, there were 7.9 billion images – photos, and GIF, and 2.4 billion videos – videos, and voice messages.
Notably, WhatsApp only recently rolled out the ability to share animated GIF images on the platform. WhatsApp for iPhone got the feature first back in November, while WhatsApp for Android got the feature as well as the ability to stream shared videos, letting users view videos before they were downloaded.
New Year’s Eve also saw WhatsApp stop working on older versions of Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. The social media platform reported that all, devices running on Android 2.2 or lower, iOS 6 or lower, and Windows Phone 7 are no longer supported by the app. The company advised anyone with one of those older handsets who want to keep chatting with friends simply to buy a newer phone.
On the app’s up-coming features, WhatsApp is tipped to add a new feature to its iPhone app that will let it’s users edit and revoke sent messages. The upcoming feature is said to be disabled by default for WhatsApp for iPhone beta app users, though it’s expected to be available soon.
Another tipped feature is the ability to preview shared archive files, such as ZIP and RAR files.
It’s a shame that so many people still use WhatsApp. There are solid alternatives like Threema or Signal; unlike WhatsApp, these services don’t exploit users’ metadata. But since many people are used to being exploited because they depend on services like Facebook, it seems like they stopped caring.