In the business sector, the pandemic has helped apps like Zoom and Microsoft Teams become hugely popular, but privately, WhatsApp is and remains an important channel for keeping in touch with friends and family. This not only affects chats and text messages, but also (group) calls.
interference and noise
Now users of the group calling feature get various innovations. Perhaps the most important is the ability to mute individual participants. This can be the annoying guy who keeps making inappropriate comments on family calls, but also someone who annoys everyone else because he doesn’t realize there’s loud background noise around him. This is particularly useful when two or more participants are seated in a single room, to eliminate disturbing echoes.
Conferencing apps like Zoom and Microsoft Teams allow you to mute all or some participants, but this is usually reserved for the host or administrator. Individual users can’t do this, but WhatsApp now allows it very well.
Plus, group calls get a second handy feature, namely the option to text someone directly through chat. Of course, this is particularly useful in cases where you want to make a comment or joke (about the embarrassing uncle) that you don’t want everyone to hear or read. There’s also a new overlay that shows when someone joins a meeting after it’s already started.
Apart from that, WhatsApp recently announced that it is introducing refined privacy settings. You can now individually select which person in your contact list can see your profile picture, status, and “last seen.”
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