Whatsapp, which is owned by Facebook, has announced that they have reduced the status video time limit from 30 seconds to 15 seconds in India to reduce Strain on internet networks during coronavirus lockdown period. This action has been taken since WhatsApp is widely be used to share the videos among the millions of Indians which causes heavy traffic to internet providers.
WABetaInfo has revealed this through a tweet that Whatsapp has put a bar on the time limit of the video posted under the “Status” of the Facebook-owned instantaneous messaging app.
“One cannot send videos to WhatsApp Status if they are longer than 16 seconds: only videos having duration of 15 seconds will be allowed. It is happening in India, and it’s probably an initiative to reduce the traffic on the server infrastructures,” WABetaInfo tweeted on Sunday.
The total number of WhatsApp users in India is about 400 million. The Facebook-owned messaging platform has asked the users to crop any video longer than 15 seconds only then they will be able to post the video in their status.
Since this is taking place in India, as currently, the country is under the lockdown of 21 days that is till 15th April 2020, it is being believed that this move has been taken so that they can handle the traffic pressure on the internet servers in the country.
Most of the internet servers have assured that they have taken the necessary precaution to brace and handle the increase in the traffic, and. This happens due to the pressure comes due to the sharp rise in the daily usage from the people. The reason is because many of them work from home and are stuck being inside.
During the time of launch, 90 seconds video was allowed by Whatsapp to upload. If the size of the file was above 16 MB, then the app gave the option to trim the file before sending it. Later on, the limit was reduced to 30 seconds.
According to a study done by Kantar, a data consulting company, there has been an increase of 40% in global usage of Whatsapp.
Mean while, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hotstar and Youtube have reduced the Video Quality on mobile Phones to help Internet providers by minimizing their server loads.