People Calling New WhatsApp Feature The 'Best Thing That Ever Happened'

The messaging platform is the main tool through which the majority of people actually communicate with one another.

I struggle to remember the last time I actually phoned a mate for a proper conversation and not just to tell them, 'I'm at the pub'.

But while other social media sites have made advances in the way they allow us to communicate, WhatsApp has lagged behind for far too long.

And even then, by the time you had found the right picture, about five other people would have chipped in, and you've just sent a crying laughing face to your mate who's confided in the group that they've lost their job.

It was a recipe for disaster and group chats being clogged up with 'oops, sorry m8' and 's**t, that wasn't meant for you'.

But those days are gone, well, almost. WhatsApp is now rolling out a new feature allowing you to react to messages using emojis.

If you're a negative Nancy, you are out of luck, at least for now, because there's currently no option to send angry faces or a thumbs down to your pals.

At the moment, you will have to settle for more positive offerings of thumbs up, love heart, crying laughing, shocked, sad crying and praying emojis.

Announcing the change, WhatsApp said: "We’re excited to share that emoji reactions are now available on the latest version of the app. Reactions are fun, fast, and they reduce overload in groups too.

"We’ll continue improving them by adding an even broader range of expressions in the future."

And it looks as though the addition is going down very well with users.

One fan wrote: "Whatsapp reaction is the best thing ever happened."

Agreeing, another chipped in: "New reaction features are quite amazing."

"Whatsapp reactions...what an amazing small feature lol," put a third.

While another added: "OMGGG I FINALLY HAVE THE REACTIONS ON WHATSAPP."

Others out there, however, are happy to see the new reactions options just so they can escape 'dead' conversations.

Which I'm sure we can all appreciate.

"WhatsApp having emoji reactions means I can finally dead a convo in peace," wrote one.

While another announced: "If you think my WhatsApp reply game was shit before, WhatsApp message reactions is about to make me even worse. Thank you @WhatsApp."

As well as the selection of emojis, WhatsApp also announced a couple of other new features, including expanding the size of group chats.

The tech giant said: "In addition, you can now send files within WhatsApp up to 2GB in size at a time, protected by end-to-end encryption. This is an increase from the previous limit of 100MB and we think will be helpful for collaboration among small businesses and school groups.

"One of the top requests we’ve consistently received is the option to add more people to a chat, so now we’re slowly rolling out the ability to add up to 512 people to a group."