Mumbai : Only a few days back, Neeraj Arora, Vice President at the Business Development wing of WhatsApp had announced touching 70 million users in India, making it the most popular mobile instant messaging app in the country with 20 million users being added over the last five months.
More than the sheer numbers it is the engagement across this platform which makes it the undisputed Czar of the mobile messaging arena. WhatsApp engagement, close to 70 Billion messages, 1 Billion pictures and over 200 million videos are shared on WhatsApp every single day.
In an effort to make this more popular, WhatsApp has rolled out two new features earlier in the day and also made one announcement which we are all going to be very much welcomed by the WhatsApp users.
WhatsApp has announced that the mobile messenger service will remain free in India. WhatsApp policy requires users to pay an annual subscription fee of $1 after one year of free messaging. Sensing that India accounts for nearly 10% of WhatsApp total user base and that credit card penetration in India is extremely low, the now Zuckerberg owned network has decided to keep its services free inn India for the moment.
A very small percentage of the population owning credit cards is also the reason why Cash on Delivery (CoD) is the most popular mode of payment across e commerce sites in India.
Neeraj Arora was quick to add, however that they will look forward to monetization in the coming years. “Indians have it in their DNA to build the next WhatsApp for the world,” he had said earlier.
If you have been annoyed by friends and business contacts choosing not to reply to your WhatsApp messages when they didn’t want to, only to reply later with a lame excuses like, “Sorry, I didn’t see your message earlier!”, you are going to love this feature!
Users will now see two blue check marks next to their sent text messages, which will indicate whether or not the recipient has read their message.
The update has been rolled out quietly to Google Play and Android users can already see the blue check marks, though the feature has not been rolled out for Apple users yet.
The best thing about this quiet rollout has been that I did not even have to take the trouble to update my WhatsApp version before I got to see those two tick marks by my messages!!
Those two tick marks by your message indicate that your message has been delivered. Those ticks will turn blue after the message has been read.
