WhatsApp test lets you share Stories on Facebook, Instagram, Gmail

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San Francisco: Facebook-owned instant messaging app WhatsApp is testing a feature that would give users the option of sharing their status Stories directly on other social networking platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Gmail and Google Photos.

Just like Instagram, WhatsApp’s status Stories let users post images, text and videos on your profile that disappear after 24 hours. “As part of the experiment, users listed WhatsApp’s beta programme, would start to see a new sharing option beneath their statuses that would ask them if they want to further share the same Story on any of the other apps,” The Verge reported on Wednesday.

Explain the working of the feature, the report said the test feature would make use of the same iOS and Android data-sharing APIs as every other app, that would transfer data between the apps, on-device.

Currently, there is no option to have WhatsApp status automatically shared to another service and the instant messaging app intends that the feature should be an active decision on the part of the user.

However, elaborate details on the test locations and final roll-out of the feature remains unknown as of now. In so many ways, this test appears to be a development in Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to create a unified app combining WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram to let over 2.6 billion users communicate with each other cross-apps by 2020.

The move could let the social networking giant tout higher user engagement to advertisers, thus, ramping up its advertising division at a time when growth has slowed down. However, WhatsApp has to be careful about creating the impression of data sharing with Facebook, the report said. Released in 2009 first, WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook in 2014.