WhatsApp Channels Rolls Out To 150 More Countries With New Features

Image Credit: WhatsApp

WhatsApp has launched its Channels feature to users in over 150 countries. It’s a convenient, yet private way to receive updates from organizations, sports teams, artists, and various other leads that you can follow within the app.

Through Channels, WhatsApp plans to create the most private broadcast service that’s available to the public. Channels is kept separate from the rest of your chats. Who you choose to follow is not visible to anyone but yourself. In addition to this, the personal information of both admins and followers is kept private and protected.

Image Credit: WhatsApp

As WhatsApp begins to roll out Channels to most of the world, here are a few key features worth noting:

Enhanced Directory is a way to find channels to follow that’s automatically filtered based on where you are. WhatsApp also lets you view channels that are new, most active, and popular based on number of followers.

Reactions allows you to react using emojis to give feedback and see a count of total reactions. That said, how you respond will not be visible to other followers.

Coming soon, Editing will allow admins to make changes to their Updates for up to 30 days, which is the period after which WhatsApp automatically deletes them from its servers. Lastly, Forwarding lets you include a link back when you forward an Update to chats or groups. This is so that people have a convenient way of finding out more about it.

WhatsApp says that it will eventually allow anyone to create a channel. However, that won’t be possible for the next few months. Alongside this, the company will be adding more features to Chanels to expand its capabilities.

The company has also launched the official WhatsApp Channel, which you can use to to keep update to date on the app and the relevant updates that is being worked on.