Though WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, plenty of the app’s users are happy to ignore the fact the big blue parent network exists—somewhat surprisingly, Facebook has been fair enough to let WhatsApp do its own thing since its $19 billion purchase back in 2014. But there are signs this might be slowly changing.
WhatsApp is finally bringing the anticipated feature that will allow users to share Status updates to Facebook Stories as well. The feature has been under development for a while, and now the company is reported to have enabled it for testing. The feature will show up for all users who have signed up for the beta program. Users won’t need to link their WhatsApp accounts to Facebook to use this feature. The app uses the data-sharing API that is used by several other apps as well, to share user Status as a Facebook Story.
However, to ensure the privacy and safety of its users, WhatsApp will not be linking the two platforms but is only using the data-sharing API on Android and iOS, just like every other app does. “It’s making use of the same iOS and Android data-sharing APIs as every other app, meaning data is transferred between the apps on-device. Even if you share data to another Facebook-owned service like Instagram, WhatsApp says the two posts will be separate events in Facebook’s systems, and they will not be linked.”
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. The ‘Share to Facebook Story’ button will go live right under your Status. Clicking on it will take you to the Facebook app, where you can then post it as a Story. This option can be used to post your status to other apps like Instagram, Gmail, and Google Photos as well, the report states.
WhatsApp is enabling this feature for testing, which means beta users will be able to see it. However, elaborate details on the test locations and final roll-out of the feature remains unknown as of now.
Let us know if you see the feature in the latest beta in the comments below!
