Why WhatsApp Needs the Mentions Feature

WhatsApp has become the preferred messaging platform globally all-but-killing SMS in some countries.

I am not a chatty person whether online or offline but I found about 2 years ago that I needed to be able to communicate with people instantly because of some projects I was working on and organizations I belong to.

WhatsApp groups feature came-in handy in this regard and while it is not the only instant messaging service that has this feature, it's cross-platform availability and acceptance make it one of the easiest instant messaging services to use for this purpose.

Now, back to the groups I belong to, I have a problem that I think many people face and the team at WhatsApp can help solve. It is that a lot of times, I am not interested in the issues being discussed in a group at a certain time,; may have muted the group but would still like to know if someone has referred to me in the entire stream of sometimes thousands of messages.

A mentions feature would really help in this regard so that I get notifications when my profile name or phone number gets mentioned in the group. Right now, I have to ignore a lot of important comments addressed to me because I can sort through the streams of messages in different groups.

I know a search feature exists but is not efficient for this purpose as I would still miss majority of mentions if I rely on it.

Let's hope that the mentions feature comes to WhatsApp soon.

Do you have a similar problem with WhatsApp? How do you address it? Let me know by dropping a comment.