WhatsApp New Feature now allows you to mention friends in a group chat

It is no longer news that WhatsApp has updated its Terms and Privacy Policy. This time around, WhatsApp has silently rolled out the ability to tag people in group chats. This makes it impossible to avoid a conversation, even if it is muted. The feature has gone live on Android and iOS as well.

So how can you tag a person in a WhatsApp Group Chat? Just type @ symbol inside a group chat, and it will start showing the names of group members you can tag. Tap on the name of the person you wish to mention, and then send the message. The advantage of this feature is that you can pick out a specific person in the Group chat for whom the message is meant. You can tag multiple people as well. The obvious benefit of this feature is to keep a conversation alive in a group chat with multiple contacts.

The big downside to this: Notifications will now appear on muted chats as well, thanks to the mentions features. Thus ensuring that you can no longer afford to ignore anyone, even if you really wanted to do that.

WhatsApp was rumoured to bring the feature earlier this year, but it has taken some time for the feature to arrive. WhatsApp has a slew of new features like the ability to format text (bold, italics, underline), share PDFs, Docs as well and files from third-party apps like Google Drive, iCloud and Microsoft’s OneDrive.

Recently, WhatsApp updated its global privacy policy, under which it will now share phone numbers of users with its parent company, Facebook. While the move will help Facebook offer more targeted advertisements on its own platform, WhatsApp will continue to be ad-free, a WhatsApp spokesperson told PTI. He added that this is the first time when WhatsApp has updated user privacy policy after being acquired by Facebook in 2014 in a USD 19-billion deal.

Privacy advocates had raised concerns that Facebook would start mining WhatsApp accounts for data. However, both the companies have maintained that WhatsApp would operate separately from the parent company and that its user data would not be shared without users' consent.

WhatsApp has over one billion users globally, with a significant chunk coming from India. Facebook also runs photo-sharing platform, Instagram. "As part of the Facebook family of companies, WhatsApp receives information from, and shares information with, this family of companies. We may use the information we receive from them, and they may use the information we share with them to help operate, provide, improve, understand, customise, support, and market our services and their offerings," the spokesperson said. He added this helps improve infrastructure and delivery systems, secure systems and fight spam, abuse, or infringement activities.

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