WhatsApp Newsletter is a new feature under development marked as a one-to-many feature for broadcasting information.
WhatsApp, the Meta owned messaging app has over the years continued to evolve and add new features to enhance it’s users messaging experience.
Communities is the latest update from WhatsApp, this feature brings related groups together and simplifies management of multiple groups.
Now, WhatsApp is working on a new feature called Newsletter, probably because the communities feature has received positive feedback.
The incoming feature, currently called Newsletters, was spotted by WABetaInfo in WhatsApp’s latest Android beta (version 2.23.5.8, to be precise) and suggests the messaging app is about to jump into the popular news format that’s traditionally lived in our email inbox.
How Will The Newsletter Feature Work?
Newsletters will be a one-to-many tool for broadcasting information and this feature looks like a new way to easily receive useful updates from people and groups like local officials, sports teams, or other organizations.
As the early previews show (image above), the Newsletter feature will live quite prominently in WhatsApp’s Status tab. Here you’ll be able to “stay updated on topics that matter to you” and follow new newsletters by hitting the plus icon and entering a username.
As a result of the new Newsletter tab, status updates will be shown in a horizontal layout, similar to Instagram Stories.
Privacy Concerns
According to WABetaInfo, Newsletters have been built with Privacy and Security in mind. Users will be able to control who they follow, and nobody else will be able to see who they follow, regardless of whether they’re in their contacts list or not.
Users who create and subscribe to a newsletter will also have their phone numbers masked and hidden to prevent the disclosure of their identity.
The feature also does not have any ads at the moment, and there is no sign of algorithmic recommendations, or social graphs pushing content to users that they didn’t choose to see.
In addition, this Newsletters will support handles, that means that users will be able to easily find and join Newsletters by searching for them using a username right within WhatsApp.
We will be following this story and we will do a follow up blog when we have further details to share with you. Meanwhile, if you’d want to link your existing WhatsApp account to multiple Android devices have our a look at our detailed article on how to go about that.
Have any thoughts on this? Drop us a comment below in the comments section, or carry the discussion over to our Twitter, Facebook and Telegram
