The majority of messaging and social media services will allow you to tag people using the “@” symbol so they receive a notification. Now, WhatsApp is bringing the same function to its popular app for group chats, and it even works when the tagged person has muted a conversation.
As is the case with Facebook, Twitter and most of the other platforms that use tagging, WhatsApp’s version simply requires you to type in the “’@” symbol, at which point you can type in the user’s name or select it from a menu that pops up. You can tag multiple contacts and even people who aren't in your address book but are part of the same group chat.
Additionally, the maximum number of users that can take part in a group chat has now been extended from 100 to 256. The increase should make the new tagging function particularly useful when trying to grab the attention of the right person, especially when there are a large number of participants in a group.
Much like its parent company’s messaging service, Messenger, WhatsApp has been adding several new feature recently. Back in June, the company starting allowing users to quote messages in group chats to show who they were responding to.
WhatsApp continues to be one of the most downloaded applications in the world. The announcement last month that it would be sharing more of its user data - including phone numbers - with Facebook doesn't seem to have had much impact on its popularity.
Users can use the new tagging feature on the Android and iOS versions of WhatsApp, but it’s not available on the web.
