After Instagram, Whatsapp. Meta's messaging application announced this Thursday the upcoming launch of a new feature: chat channels. Similar to what already exists on Telegram, users will be able to create a channel in which they can broadcast their messages, photos, videos, polls and stickers to subscribers.
It will be possible to join a chat channel and react to posted messages. But no comment possible: unlike Twitter, Facebook, only emojis can be issued in reaction to content. A device that again takes up that of... Telegram.
FC Barcelona and WHO among the first users
"WhatsApp channels will be accessible from a new dedicated tab "News", which will separate itfrom individual or group conversations as well as Communities," Meta said in a statement. "This new feature will first be launched in Singapore and Colombia," he said, without giving an exact launch date.
Read alsoWhatsApp: how the Communities function will put order in your discussion groups
The "chat channels" should then be extended to other countries, with strong structures to carry this update. The World Health Organization (WHO), FC Barcelona and Manchester United are already among the names announced. But again, it is impossible to know when.
A launch a few days after an appearance on Instagram
These announcements come as the feature is gradually implemented on another social network of the Meta group, Instagram. Called "Channels" on this one, it is already used by the French influencer Léna Situations.
This tool reserved for the moment for the most popular accounts allows, just like WhatsApp chat channels in the long term, to send text, photos and videos, but also voice notes or surveys to their subscribers.