iWorld
Eros Now enters South Africa with Telecel Global
MUMBAI: Eros Now has become the first Indian OTT player to enter the South African market through a strategic partnership with telecommunications provider Telecel Global.
As part of this partnership, Eros Now will be available to Telecel customers as a bundled service with their prepaid and postpaid data plans, IPTV and set-top box with multi-purpose quad service applications. Subscribers will now have access to Eros Now’s library of popular movies, music, TV shows, and originals. Eros Now will leverage on a committed number of annual paid subscribers from this association with Telecel.
Commenting on the partnership, Eros Digital CEO Rishika Lulla Singh said, “We are excited to enter South Africa in association with Telecel. With this partnership, we continue to expand our global customer reach and strengthen our philosophy of being platform agnostic. Knowing the growing demand among South African viewers for online video content, we will be able to provide the best of Indian entertainment to customers, whenever and wherever they want it”.
Additionally, Telecel Global is expanding its market presence and services into South Africa. Telecel Global CEO Aimable Mpore said, “This partnership with Eros Now is one step forward towards reaching out to our ethnic customers in South Africa by offering them content customised to their taste and bringing them closer to their mother land.”
Popularly referred to as ‘The Mobile Continent’, South Africa has seen a high rate of mobile phone adaptation. As per a Nielsen report, mobile video is particularly prominent in African regions.
iWorld
WhatsApp may soon let users to pick who sees their status updates
The messaging giant is borrowing a page from Instagram’s playbook as it pushes to give users finer control over their social circles.
CALIFORNIA: WhatsApp is quietly working on a feature that could make its Status function considerably smarter and considerably more private.
According to reports from beta tracking platforms, the app is testing a tool called Status lists, which would allow users to create named groups such as close friends, family and colleagues, and control precisely which group sees each update. It is a meaningful step up from the platform’s current blunt instruments, which offer only three options: share with all contacts, exclude specific people, or manually select individuals each time.
The new feature draws an obvious comparison with Instagram’s Close Friends function, and the resemblance is unlikely to be accidental. Both platforms sit within Meta’s family, and the company has been nudging them toward a common logic of audience segmentation for some time.
The move also fits neatly into WhatsApp’s broader privacy push. The platform has been rolling out enhanced chat protections and is exploring the introduction of usernames, which would allow users to connect without exchanging phone numbers. Status lists extend that philosophy from messaging into broadcasting.
Meanwhile, Status itself has been evolving well beyond its origins as a simple photo-and-text slideshow. The feature now supports music stickers, collages, longer videos and interactive elements, pushing it closer to the social-media-style story format pioneered by Snapchat and refined by Instagram. In that context, finer audience controls are not merely a privacy feature. They are a precondition for people sharing more.
The feature remains in development and has not been confirmed for release. WhatsApp routinely tests tools that are later modified or quietly shelved. But the direction of travel is clear: the app wants Status to be a destination, not an afterthought. Letting users decide exactly who is in the audience is how it gets there.
