WhatsApp adds 'status' feature

It has only taken WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned social messaging app, four months to add another 100 million active users.

NEW YORK -- In a nod to its past as well as its future, WhatsApp is adding a "status" feature that lets users tell their contacts what they are up to.

It's not a new idea -- WhatsApp started out as a way for people to let their friends know what they are up to -- at work or available, for example. Messaging, now the app's main function, was added later.

But it's also a sign that the Facebook-owned app is expanding the amount of features it has, just as Instagram, another Facebook subsidiary, has been doing over the years.

WhatsApp says the status posts will be end-to-end encrypted, just as its messages are. That means only the parties who are communicating can see the messages, not an outside party or even WhatsApp.