Most of you might not be using the feature but it’s worth pointing out that WhatsApp is limiting duration of video uploaded to its ‘Status’ feature up to 15 seconds.
This limit has been reportedly observed for users in India, and it’s likely this arrangement has been done owing to the country’s lockdown. The development was first spotted by WABetainfo few days back, who shared this tweet with its community.
The report suggests the measure has been adopted “to reduce the traffic on the server infrastructure.” This update seems to be part of Facebook’s effort to ease network congestion across its products for users in India as well as other parts of the world.
So if users in India try to upload video of more than 15 seconds as Status on WhatsApp, it won’t be posted. Previously you could upload videos of up to 30 seconds for Status on the platform, which won’t be temporarily possible.
WhatsApp caters to more than 400 million users in the country.
Recently we came across a report which says usage of popular social media apps like WhatsApp and Facebook has also seen a huge growth, especially in countries that have been put on lockdown.
This report from Kantar highlights the overall growth in WhatsApp usage has been over 40 percent, and this includes other Facebook-owned apps like Instagram as well.
The report also points out people aged between 18 to 34 years have been the biggest contributor to the growth. These figures look into usages across different phases of the coronavirus pandemic.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)