WhatsApp, the most popular messaging service, is offering its more than 1 billion users a new reason to keep coming back to the app multiple times a day: live location sharing.
With the help of this new service, a user can select to allow a contact or a group map out their position or movement on a chart in real time for a definite time frame. The service is different from the existing “share location” trait that shares a static position. But, like the still position, live locality also will only be noticeable to the friends or groups one wishes to share it with.
As of February this year, WhatsApp possessed 200 million monthly active users in the country, making the nation its prime zone.
WhatsApp product manager Zafir Khan said, “We were trying to solve the rendezvous problem: when you are meeting up with a group when you want to share where you are when you are commuting, or when you want to let your loved ones know that you are safe. These are the scenarios where the live location is useful.”
Previously too, application programs and web companies have integrated social site-sharing as a characteristic. On Uber, a person can share the trip position with a contact, which lets them follow the cab’s movement instantaneously. In June 2017, Snapchat rolled out a location-sharing feature called Snap Map.
Google introduced Google Latitude during 2009 – a product the search giant “retired” after a period of 4 years.
WhatsApp’s live location characteristic had been in progress for the past few months and he said that it will be back-to-back encrypted like the messages, images and video recordings shared on the application program.
“We understand that location is an intimate piece of information, so the option to ‘stop sharing’ is prominently displayed,” said Khan.
Impact on battery life –
When asked Khan, if the novel characteristic has an adverse impact on their handset’s battery life, he answered, “Our engineering team spent a significant amount of time optimizing battery and performance for this feature. We have special techniques to help conserve your battery when sharing live location. So it takes into account a number of different factors, such as how long you’ve been sharing your live location, whether someone on the other end who you are sharing with is actually looking at the map, your current battery level.”