WhatsApp began thebroader rollout of Channelsin the middle of the year after beingextensively testedin beta releases during the preceding months. Since then, we’ve seen the Meta-ownedmessaging appworking on a couple of enhancements to Channels, including, but not limited to,message editingandpolls. The chat app is now looking to bundle message forwarding to the one-to-many messaging functionality, as revealed by the app’s latest beta for Android.
Simply put, Channel owners would be able to forward messages from other chats to their Channel, including text, images, videos, GIFs, audio messages, stickers, etc, according toWABetaInfo, who found traces of this feature within WhatsApp beta for Androidv2.23.26.2. However, since it’s still in the early stages of development, message forwarding hasn’t fully rolled out to all beta testers, per the source.
But we’re lucky enough to get a basic understanding of how it would work when it eventually goes live. As you can see below, it works exactly as one expects, letting Channel owners directly forward a message from a group or 1-1 conversation onto the Channel you run. Another use case here, as WABetaInfo puts it, is giving people the ability to refine and edit the message in another chat window before forwarding it to the masses.
The fact that one can instantaneously forward images, videos, or text to thousands of people also has its obvious downsides, such as the possible spread of misinformation. According toWhatsApp’s guidelines, it uses “automated tools, manual review, and user reports” to detect violations. So these safeguards will have a bigger role to play as this broadcasting feature continues to grow.
It’s hard to provide an ETA for its wider availability, with WABetaInfo saying it would appear in a “future update” of the chat app. Nevertheless, there’s merit in a feature like this, especially for organizations that are looking to get the word out to their audiences quickly. With this in mind, we suspect it shouldn’t be long before it makes it to the beta testers and, eventually, the stable version of WhatsApp for Android.
Much like some of the other recent additions on WhatsApp, channels have long existed on rival messaging apps like Telegram. Moreover, WhatsApp’s implementation also lacked some basic functionality on launch day, such as the ability tosend stickers and voice messagesor a simplified way ofsharing individual Channel updates. Away from Channels, a recently surfaced WhatsApp beta carried clues about a potential integration with sister app Instagram, letting people share or repost theirWhatsApp status on the image sharing app.
