Thomas Ibingira, a mobile app developer, was chatting using his WhatsApp and all of a sudden he saw blue ticks on one of his messages as opposed to the grey tick that we are all used to.

"It started with only one of my texts and I thought it was for only the person you chat with the most. It puzzled me and a couple of friends for the whole night until it went general the following day with many others in my chat list,” he said.

The blue ticks indeed puzzled users of the social media and some other theories were that it was for only those that officially paid for the app.

What do the blue ticks mean?

For years, WhatsApp users have argued over the relevance of the double tick system. Does it mean the message has been read by the recipient, or merely received by their phone?

The issue is resolved once and for all after Whatsapp finally updated its protocol with a double blue tick mark to indicate the message has been read.

A single grey tick now represents that the message has been successfully sent, while two grey ticks mean it has been delivered to their phone. Once the ticks turn blue, the recipient has read your message, the company confirmed in a blog post.

Facebook Messenger, iMessage and others have offered read receipts as an option for several years, alerting beady-eyed senders to the exact time their message had been opened.

Those paranoid can check the exact time the message was delivered and subsequently the time it was read by pressing the blue-ticked message and holding in for a few seconds, before selecting ‘info’.

iOS and Android Whatsapp users are not required to update their software to receive the new feature, as it is being rolled out ‘over-the-air’, meaning some users will receive the blue ticks before others.

Evolving in partnership

Facebook purchased WhatsApp in February for $19 billion. At the time, the company published a blog post detailing their continued commitment to privacy, declaring that "if partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we wouldn’t have done it.”

"Our principles will not change. Everything that has made WhatsApp the leader in personal messaging will still be in place. Speculation to the contrary isn’t just baseless and unfounded, it’s irresponsible. It has the effect of scaring people into thinking we’re suddenly collecting all kinds of new data. That’s just not true, and it’s important to us that you know that.”

Christine Kavuste, a social media enthusiast, said the call for the blue ticks was timely and shows how far WhatsApp has gone in connecting people.

"We have moved to a point where social media isn’t just for connecting with friends and chatting but also a bridge in business. You can send someone a whatsApp text even in a meeting and get a reply without disturbing the meeting,” she said,

"The blue ticks will help especially when contacting someone about urgent matters because you get to know if or not someone has read the message.”

WhatsApp, founded in 2009, is the most popular global messaging app, with more than 600 million users around the world.

More than half a billion people around the globe are regular, active users, with more than 700 million photos and 100 million videos shared each day.