WhatsApp recently made a change. Not a big change, but one that some users have really not taken kindly to. It involves the change from a lower-case to a capital letter—in just two words. But it caused quite the outrage, and WhatsApp has now suddenly reversed it. Here’s the score.
On Monday, April 15, as reported by Andrew Griffin at The Independent, WhatsApp was caught for making a change so tiny you would have thought nobody would have noticed. WhatsApp perhaps thought nobody would spot it. If so, it was wrong.
As Griffin points out, “Inside conversations on the app, users can see information about the status of the person they are talking to. It will indicate when they are “online”, or if they are “typing…”. Until recently, those messages did not include a capital letter. But in recent days, some users have found that the first letters of those messages have been swapped for capitals.”
Yes, online was changed to Online, and typing to Typing. You might even argue that such an alteration is grammatically desirable.
The change, which came to Android and iOS versions of the app alike, though not to all people, caused a big response. One user on X posted, “why has whatsapp capitalised the first letters on “online” and “typing..” pls it’s making me icky.” Please note, the absence of capitals in the post is down to the poster, not me. And that post has been viewed 84,000 times.
Which led to replies employing enough capitals to make up for things, saying, “please I KNOW ITS SUCH A SMALL DETAIL BUT ITS SO ANNOYING.”
Others complained that the issue wasn’t so much that the letter was now capitalized as the fact that when moved to upper case, the design was compromised, placing the letter too close to the thumbnail image of the person typing.
And more users said the design change was confusing and unnecessary. The phrase “making a mountain out of a molehill,” could have been created for this situation.
But it’s had an effect. WhatsApp has now told The Independent that, “the change was a test with a limited number of users—and that it will be reversed.”
Dear reader, I can hear you sigh with relief.
All this may seem trivial, especially when many WhatsApp users can be so careless with spelling, grammar and punctuation that taking umbrage over capitalization might come across as a bit rich.
But it reminds us that some apps, and WhatsApp is definitely one of them, have become so central to our lives that we feel we own them. Mucking about them in even the tiniest of ways can awaken a torrent of protest.
And, more importantly, it serves to say that such a protest can have a potent effect.
