After announcing the communities feature back in April, Whatsapp has finally started to roll it out globally. Communities on the platform are expected to be available to everyone over the next few years.
Communities is aimed at replacing larger group chats with added features like file sharing up to 2GBs, 32-person video calls, emoji reactions, and admin and moderation tools, among other things. Communities will also include admin tools, including announcement messages sent to everyone and control over which groups can be included in a community.
Once in a Community, users can access all the groups collected under said community in one place and easily switch between available groups to get the information they need. They can be started using the Communities tab on the top of your chats in Android or on the bottom in iOS.
Starting now, users can also create groups of up to 1,024 member groups, get in-chat polls, 32-person audio or video calls, up to 2GB of file sharing and the ability to delete any message in a group or community provided you’re the admin. These features can be used in standalone groups or communities and will join the reactions feature that has already rolled out some time ago and most likely already exists on your device.
Whatsapp claims it works with over 50 organisations in 15 countries to build Communities to meet their exact requirements. The feedback so far seems to be good but the company plans to build and keep adding features over the coming months.
There’s a lot happening at Meta, Whatsapp’s parent company at the moment. Its Meta Connect 2022 saw new features being added to the Metaverse as well as the release of the company’s next-gen VR headset, the Meta Quest Pro and new updates to online social and work environment, these updates from Whatsapp fit right into the direction the company is headed.
In the News: Over 250 US news outlet websites hacked to deploy SocGholish malware
