Fed up with the bombardment of messages in a WhatsApp group? Well, WhatsApp with its new feature ‘Only Admin’ promises to reduce unnecessary messages in groups that you have been part of. With many people being part of the group, this new feature restricts sending of messages by group admins only. Whatsapp announced this feature on its official blog on June 29, 2018. The feature is operational now and anyone can enable this feature within few seconds.
We take a look at the features that are offered by WhatsApp, Google Duo, and Facebook Messenger and keep them side by side to let you know if the app is worth your time.
WhatsApp, Google Duo, or Facebook Messenger – which is the best app for video calling?
With the boom in the Internet scene of India, people began switching to video calls to just simply have a casual talk or discuss something important. The voice calls are still a first choice for many and is hardly to be replaced by video calls, but that doesn’t mean video calls are a dud. There are several apps that allow video conferencing and calls, along with additional features that come handy as move along to use them more frequently. The most popular apps in India that come with video calling feature are WhatsApp, Google Duo, and Facebook Messenger. We take a look at the features that are offered by WhatsApp, Google Duo, and Facebook Messenger and keep them side by side to let you know if the app is worth your time. The prime focus of the three apps is to simplify the way you talk to your friends and relatives via voice and video calls. While voice calls are equally important, they are usually preferred via the cellular networks rather than VoIP calls. We have not considered the promptness of the apps as this is something that largely depends on the Internet connection.
WhatsApp Messenger
WhatsApp is undoubtedly the most popular messaging app with over 200 million monthly active users in India. The Facebook-owned app introduced the video calling feature in 2016. The users welcomed this feature to a great extent, so much so that it last year said that Indians made 50 million minutes of video calls daily on the platform. WhatsApp has since been making several improvements to make the video calling service better. The WhatsApp video calls can be initiated to a contact by either jumping to the contact list or to a recent chat on the chat screen. The users are required to tap on the video calling icon to begin the video calling feature. The moment it starts ringing, you can see yourself on the screen with a black overlay, in addition to the profile picture of the person who you’re calling. Now, when your call is answered, you will begin seeing additional buttons on the call screen. You can switch the cameras between the front and rear – the video being captured by your camera will be at the bottom right in a small rectangular widget that can be tapped to make fullscreen. You also see mute button, and a disable video call button, in addition to the end call button. In case you’re on a voice call on WhatsApp, you will now be able to switch to a video call by tapping a button in the call interface in the latest WhatsApp version for Android and iOS.
Google Duo
Google has several video calling apps such as Hangouts, however at the I/O conference in 2016, Google realised to focus more on messaging and calling apps. It launched the Google Allo and Google Duo apps at the conference. Google has been bullish about the Google Duo app in the Indian market. It even began offering the people who didn’t use Google Duo a glimpse of how it works along with a download button. Google Duo is comparatively simpler than WhatsApp since it doesn’t support textual messaging. It comes with voice and video calls where the latter is what it is primarily known for. The Google Duo has an interesting feature called Knock Knock that lets the person who you are calling see your video before the call is answered. However, you won’t be able to see their video unless the call is answered. The Knock Knock feature can be turned off in case you don’t want yourself to be seen before your call is answered on the other side. The Google Duo app was recently update to bring design changes including a fresh contact list and a recent list. You can go the contacts list where you will find the people in your contacts who use Duo. By tapping on their names, you initiate the call. There is also a high quality mode that will improve the video quality while consuming more data. This feature can too be turned off.
Facebook Messenger
Facebook Messenger was initially launched as one of the suite of apps from the social media giant. However later, Messenger was considered more like a standalone app and as a result, Facebook made Messenger independent of your Facebook profile. While the option to use Messenger with your Facebook account is still available, you can alternatively sign up with just your mobile number without having to create a Facebook profile if you don’t wish to. Facebook Messenger has a lot more features than WhatsApp and Google Duo. It comes with stickers, games, automated responses from brand pages, and chatbots. Major companies including Apple and Spotify currently feature their chatbots inside Messenger to facilitate people who use their services such as Apple Music and Spotify playlist sharing. The video calling feature works similar to the one on WhatsApp. You go to a chat and just tap on the video calling option at the top. Additionally, there is a separate tab where all your voice and video calls are saved, along with a new call button, on tapping which will open the contact list from where you can choose the contact you want to call. Moreover, you can even start a group call with more than one contacts. On the calls tab, there is an option to start group call, tap on it and select the contacts you want to call. The call interface of Messenger is better than WhatsApp and Google Duo. the video call screen has mute, video chat off and end call option. In addition, you see two more options on the top – on the right corner is the chat icon while on the left is the camera switch button. Tapping on chat icon will bring you the chat screen while your video call is still running in a Picture-in-Picture (PiP) mode. You can even put on AR stickers and masks while on the call, which is currently not supported on WhatsApp and Google Duo. Well, that’s all about the video calling feature of WhatsApp, Google Duo, and Facebook Messenger. While the main purpose of video calling is to look at the person you’re calling, some additional features just bring about more fun and are good to toy with. If you know any other good features that we might have missed out in this list, let us know in the comments section below.
WhatsApp, the messaging app that can be seen on almost every smartphone in the world, is a victim of a system that has been around since the early days of internet. Check out what WhatsApp is doing to stop spam messages.
With a main aim to stop the mass spam messages, Facebook owned WhatsApp is in works to develop a new feature in the upcoming update that will curb spam messages. (AP)
WhatsApp is a messaging app that can be seen on almost every smartphone in the world. And, now, with the main aim to stop the mass spam messages, Facebook-owned WhatsApp is in works to develop a new feature in the upcoming update that will highlight a ‘forwarded message’ and will be able to distinguish between a regular message and a spam message. This will work if the spam message has been forwarded from any other group or taken from one of the members in a chat group. WhatsApp watchdog, wabetainfo.com, who keeps a track on the latest and upcoming updates of the messaging app, posted about the feature in their blog post. As per wabetainfo.com, the feature can be seen in the WhatsApp Google Play Beta Programme, version 2.18.67. According to the blog, the new feature will show a small bubble and a string of “Forwarded Message” will appear under it which have been taken or forwarded from other chat. A message will be treated as a spam and will be highlighted under the bubble only when it has been shared a lot of times. A usual spammer behaviour is that it sends the same message to many users at once, by selecting his/her contact list or from some registration service or straight from the internet. These messages are usually unwanted messages, fake news or some inappropriate links to dubious websites. As if now, on WhatsApp, you can send a message at least 25 times. Other than the motive to combat the spam messages, WhatsApp is working towards to add the feature to add stickers to other chats. Both these features will be available sometime in future. As there has not been any strict timeline that has been provided by the messaging app. Meanwhile, WhatsApp launched a great new feature that will come in handy for a lot of people. WhatsApp came up with the Payments feature which aims to payments to other users easy and convenient.
WhatsApp in January launched it Business app for small and medium businesses in selective markets which include Italy, Mexico, Indonesia, the United States, India and the UK
WhatsApp in January launched it Business app for small and medium businesses in selective markets which include Italy, Mexico, Indonesia, the United States, India and the UK. (Reuters)
WhatsApp in January launched its Business app for small and medium businesses (SMEs) in selective markets which include Italy, Mexico, Indonesia, the United States, India and the UK. Now, it has been reported that the Facebook-owned messaging app will soon roll out the version for more countries. As the name suggests, WhatsApp Business app comes with business-oriented features and targets business entities. The app is available in the Google Play Store in the aforementioned countries. WhatsApp Business App is currently being tested in its beta versions with various businesses across the world, including some businesses in India such as BookMyShow and Netflix India. The business-oriented Facebook-owned app sports features such as Messaging Statistics, Business Profiles, Account Type and Messaging Tools which includes quick replies, away messages and greeting messages. Users to note that verified accounts will get ‘green badges’ something similar to Twitter’s verified accounts. But how does one get the ‘Green Badge’?
WhatsApp.
Here is how it is possible to get a verified badge for WhatsApp Business accounts:
In a report by WABeta Info WhatsApp follows a process to gauge if a business can be given a green badge, which would make it verified. The process is automatically reviewed. This means that the messaging app has some internal checks and they adopt an automatic process, which detects if a business account can be verified or not.
WABeta Info.
“You have to do nothing to get the verified badge on WhatsApp: you mustn’t send a request to WhatsApp, you mustn’t ask them to have it and sending to them some documents that demonstrate that your business exists and it’s real is totally useless,” WABeta Info said in its report. This means a user cannot just expect to download WhatsApp Business app to get their account verified and get a green badge next to their name.
This feature has been spotted on WhatsApp beta version 2.18.54 and later versions for Android and WhatsApp bet... Read More
WhatsApp seems to be on quite a roll when it comes to launching new features and services. In the last six months, the popular messaging app has been actively upgrading features. The latest addition is a new feature for group chat users, called the Group Descriptions. As the name suggests, this feature enables users to add a up to 500 characters’ description for the members of any group.
As per reports, the feature of adding a description for a group is not restricted to just the admins but can be added by any member in the group. However, this may be changed in the future. Also, this description is visible only to fellow group members who have this option of adding the description, others don’t see it. Once the description is added, the group chat gets a notification as well that ‘Person’s name has changed the group description. Tap to view.’ If you remove the description, that gets recorded on the group chat too.
This feature has been spotted on WhatsApp beta version 2.18.54 and later versions for Android and WhatsApp beta version 2.18.28 on Windows Phone as of now and is soon expected to be rolled out to iOS users as well.
Amidst all this, WhatsApp has also been gearing up to roll out, what can easily be called as one of the biggest features since the 'Delete for Everyone', WhatsApp payment option. This feature has been rolled out to select Beta users on both Android and iOS. It is based on Unified Payment interface and (UPI) requires both sender and receiver should to have the UPI payment option enabled. To enable this payment option, WhatsApp has partnered with various banks in the country including ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, SBI, Yes Bank and others.
नई दिल्ली। फेसबुक के स्वामित्व वाले वाट्सएप ने साल 2018 का अपना पहला ऑफिसियल अपडेट लांच कर दिया है। वाट्सएप का ये अपडेट बीटा वर्जन पर काम करेगा। साथ ही यूज़र्स इस नए अपडेट की मदद से कॉल पर होने के साथ ही वाट्सएप वीडियो कॉल या वॉयस कॉल पर स्विच कर सकेंगे। हालांकि यह अभी साफ़ नहीं है कि क्या यूज़र्स को ऐसा करने के लिए अपनी कॉल डिस्कनेक्ट करनी होगी या नहीं।
खबर के मुताबिक ये फीचर फिलहाल एंड्रॉयड बीटा 2.1.4 वर्जन के लिए उपलब्ध है। इस फीचर को इस्तेमाल करने के लिए यूज़र्स को कॉल स्क्रीन पर मौजूद क्विक स्विच बटन पर टैप करना होगा, जिससे वॉयल कॉल से वीडियो कॉल और वीडियो कॉल से वॉयस कॉल में स्विच किया जा सकेगा।
उदहारण के लिए जैसे यूज़र वाट्सएप वॉयस कॉल पर है और उसे वीडियो कॉल पर स्विच करना है तो स्क्रीन पर दिए गए बटन पर टैप करें। ऐसा करते ही यूज़र जिससे बात कर रहा है उसके पास वीडियो कॉल रिक्वेस्ट जाएगा और अगर दूसरा उसे अक्सेप्ट करता है तो कॉल ऑटोमैटिकली स्विच हो जाएगी।
WhatsApp, Google Duo, or Facebook Messenger – which is the best app for video calling?
With a main aim to stop the mass spam messages, Facebook owned WhatsApp is in works to develop a new feature in the upcoming update that will curb spam messages. (AP)
WhatsApp in January launched it Business app for small and medium businesses in selective markets which include Italy, Mexico, Indonesia, the United States, India and the UK. (Reuters)
WhatsApp.
WABeta Info.
