WhatsApp launches massive update to Groups
WhatsApp has announced that it has begun rolling out Communities and that the feature will be available to everyone on the platform in the next few months.
The Meta Platforms-owned instant messaging platform first unveiled the new suite of features in April.
“As we shared earlier this year, we’ve been hard at work building Communities, a major update to how people will be able to connect on WhatsApp in the groups that matter to them,” it said.
“Communities like neighbourhoods, parents at a school, and workplaces can now connect multiple groups together under one umbrella to organise group conversations on WhatsApp.”
Users with access to the feature can tap on the communities tab at the top of their list of chats on Android, and at the bottom on iOS.
From there, they can start a new community or add existing groups.
When WhatsApp officially announced Communities in April, it detailed the following features for the update:
- Conversations in Communities remain end-to-end encrypted
- Phone numbers will be visible to Community admins
- Your phone number will become visible to members of the same groups as you but otherwise remain hidden
- Admins can add existing groups to the Community and unlink groups
- Admins can remove individual members from the Community entirely
- Group admins can delete inappropriate or abusive chats and media for all group members
- Users can control who is allowed to add them to a Community
- Communities will be private. No search or discovery option like Telegram
“Once you’re in a community, you can easily switch between available groups to get the information you need, when you need it, and admins can send important updates to everyone in the Community,” WhatsApp stated.
WhatsApp’s new features integrated with Communities
The messaging app said it aims to raise the bar for how organisations communicate, with a level of privacy and security not found anywhere else.
“The alternatives available today require trusting apps or software companies with a copy of their messages — and we think they deserve the higher level of security provided by end-to-end encryption,” it said.
WhatsApp also announced three more features on Thursday:
- The ability to create in-chat polls
- 32-person video calling
- Groups with up to 1024 users
“Just like emoji reactions, larger file sharing, and admin delete, these features can be used in any group but will be particularly helpful for Communities,” WhatsApp said.
Loading ...