- WhatsApp restricts the duration of a video status to 15 seconds.
- The step was taken to limit the impact of surged traffic on the platform due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
- Currently, the change is only made for some Indian users and is not a permanent feature.
The Facebook-owned company has not announced any official statement on why the duration is set to 15 seconds. But WABetainfo, a WhatsApp fan-site reported the expected reasons behind the said move in a tweet. The tweet says that the users will not be able to send videos to the WhatsApp Status feature of the app that are longer than 16 seconds. The app will only allow videos having a duration of up to 15 seconds to be uploaded to WhatsApp Status. According to WABetainfo, the step is only taken in India and it might be taken to limit the impact of surged traffic on the company’s server infrastructures. The huge increase in traffic is the result of the coronavirus lockdowns around the country.
India is under a countrywide lockdown these days. The government imposed a 21 days countrywide lockdown on March 24 in India. A lot of people sitting in their homes are using WhatsApp to connect with their friends and families. Some are using video calls, audio calls, and texting features to stay in touch with their friends and families. While a lot of people are uploading long video statuses to update their friends and families about what they are doing during self-isolation. Many are uploading the coronavirus-related information to their WhatsApp Status. These might be reasons for the surged traffic on the said platform. WhatsApp may face blackouts due to this surged traffic. It's not confirmed yet if the company is taking these steps to avoid outages and to provide its users with uninterrupted services.
The change is made only for Asian region which means that if you are using WhatsApp from any other country, you can still upload a video longer than 15 seconds to your WhatsApp Status. According to WABetaInfo, the said change is not a permanent functionality. WhatsApp might set the duration limit back to 30 seconds after India eases the coronavirus countrywide lockdowns. If you are using WhatsApp from India, you can still upload videos longer than 15 seconds to WhatsApp Status, but you’ll have to breakdown the video into smaller parts. For instance, if you want to upload a one-minute long video to your WhatsApp Status, you can do so by dividing the video into four parts having a duration of 15 seconds each.
WABI, also suggest users to download Whatsapp only from authorized resources (i.e.: from Google Play or Apple App Store) or from official website. Using modified Whatsapp versions can put users privacy and security at risk. And chances are WhatsApp will permanently ban users with tweaked and mods version.
Photo: SOPA Images via Getty Images
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