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Journalism of Courage
WhatsApp, the instant messaging platform used by billions worldwide, is often used for work and staying in touch with friends and family. While the app does have a minimal-looking chat interface, keeping up with conversations in an active group or individual conversations can be hard.
But according to a report by WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is testing a feature that will help organise message replies into threaded conversations. With the upcoming feature, it looks like WhatsApp wants to make it easier for users to find the relevant reply and stay more engaged in conversations, especially in group conversations.
The new threaded conversations feature is currently available on the latest version of WhatsApp beta for Android, which can be downloaded from the Google Play Store.
As you can see in the image above, some beta testers are now seeing a redesigned reply system where a response to a text automatically generates a new thread under the original message.
When users open a thread, they will see a complete overview of all the replies to a conversation and can reply with more messages to the thread. This reply will be marked as a “Follow up reply”, but the label won’t be visible to all users who are currently getting the feature.
This is really useful since anyone will be able to dive into the conversation without having to find and go through the process of linking past processes. Also, threads are only created for messages that have the feature enabled, which means not all conversations will be neatly arranged by default.
One thing to note is that any replies that are in a chat before the thread is created won’t be a part of it, but WhatsApp will automatically add them to a thread so that the conversation remains structured and easy to read for the sender.
Since the feature is currently in the testing phase and limited to beta users, it may take anywhere between a few weeks to months before it rolls out to the general public.
