WhatsApp has added an innovative feature in its latest beta app. The popular instant messenger is testing a new publicly shareable group invite link feature. The link can be used by anyone to join a particular WhatsApp group. To use this, you need to install the 2.16.281 version of the WhatsApp beta application.
Rumors about the newly launched feature had been circulating for the last few months. Some advanced users even got access to it by installing a test version of WhatsApp by rooting. This recent feature allows the admin of a WhatsApp group to generate a unique invite link to join the group. Every member of the group can then share the particular link through email, Facebook, text or whatever other ways possible. Any individual who gets the unique link will be able to directly join the specific group without the need of any further approval.
In fact, the feature is not just restricted to a shareable link or URL. WhatsApp has even added the ability to generate a unique QR Code or an NFC tag embedded with the specific URL. Apparently, this feature may not seem to be very useful for most individual users. But for a large institution, company or organization this will be highly beneficial. They can just issue an email to all of its students, employees or members with the exclusive code and with a single click, they can join their institution’s WhatsApp group.
An organization may even take a print out of the QR Code and paste it on the public notice board, and everyone can use their phone’s camera to scan it and enter the group instantly. This has the prospective to save a lot of time and labor as the group admin will no longer need to add each member individually. As with every new feature, this too comes with a drawback.
Since every member will be able to share the unique code, the privacy of the group may become vulnerable. It is because anyone can unrestrictedly join a group if he or she has the specific code. To tackle this weakness, WhatsApp will allow the admin of the group to deactivate the unique code at any time. This may prevent unwanted individuals from joining the group.
There is one more new feature in the latest beta build. WhatsApp has added a quick forward key beside every shared content like videos, images, GIFs and Website URLs. This will allow you to instantly re-share it without the need to perform a step of actions. To officially use the brand new WhatsApp beta version, you need to enroll as a beta tester in the Google Play. Otherwise, you may download the apk from here and install it manually on your handset.
