What-a-relief: WhatsApp to enable group invitations via link, NFC, QR

There are times when you were deliberately added into a group. You get a message that you are now part of a WhatsApp group with a few 100 people in the list. You get a message and are automatically enrolled into the new ‘unwanted’ group. Then you see a couple of messages come up, which are either advertisements or simply promotions by the group admin. Then you are immediately thrown out of the group instantaneously, whereby you cannot reply back to the user/group. Then there are times you are accidentally added into a group by mistake. You see a lot of people greeting each other, chatting and even sending media files. And you wonder—who are these people and why am i in this group. You opt out—a fair amount of trouble for you and data loss as a bonus feature.

Till date, WhatsApp users are facing a huge issue with groups. Almost every person using WhatsApp out there must have gone through this nightmare of being automatically added to an unknown group. Either by accident or by telemarketers or spammers, being automatically (forcefully and by default) added to a group is very irritating as you have absolutely no option to opt out permanently.

Well, we hope this news will ease out your problems. We have learnt that developers at WhatsApp are working and testing out a new feature whereby one can only be added to a group by invitation. It means you will no longer be ‘accidentally’ or ‘forcefully’ put into an ‘unwanted’ group on WhatsApp.

The developers will soon enable the feature for group invitations on WhatsApp which will pass on the information (the invitation) to the user and ask him to join. The invitation will be in the form of a link, QR code or NFC tapping, which makes it easier to opt in if needed.

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So if you create a new group, you would need to send the user an invitation in the form of a QR code, which he scans and enters the group. Another way would be by means of NFC. All you would need to do is to write an NFC tag or tap your NFC-enabled phones to invite another person. Lastly, a link can also be generated, where you click on it and enter the group if you are an authenticated member.

The information in the NFC tag, link and QR code can be written or printed/emailed from the WhatsApp itself. The code/tag/link would contain information about the group, the rights you will have in the group. It will also contain information about the expiry of the invitation.

Hopefully this information becomes a reality quickly and gives its users a relief from the WhatsApp group woes they currently face.

Apart from this new feature, WhatsApp is also getting ready for a new update which will enable video calling and sharing of zip files.

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