WhatsApp has been updated with several new features to make it a lot like social networking sites Facebook and Twitter. Among these features is the ability to tag and mention friends on the platform.

Tagging people has now been made possible using the "@" symbol while the number of group chat participants on WhatsApp have been increased from 100 to 256.

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The fact that users can tag a person even though they might have muted the group conversation is a feature that might not go down too well. Many users might be promoted to simply leave groups to escape bing tagged in unwanted messages.

While some users are growing wary of the application's growing similarity with social media platforms and the effect of this on their user privacy, some are actually finding the features of great help. Small businesses and entrepreneurs, in particular, are expected to use these features to their advantage.

According to Lifehacker, the updated legal information specifically reveals that the developers are aiming to make the app more business-centric.

"We will explore ways for you and businesses to communicate with each other using WhatsApp..." reads the new legal info. WhatsApp aims to achieve this by allowing users to receive info about purchases, transactions, appointment et cetera on the platform.

Currently, the new features are only available on Android version 2.16.259 and iOS version 2.16.10 of the application. It is yet to be released for WhatsApp Web.