Mark Zuckerberg has announced the roll out of the Communities feature on WhatsApp. The new feature will start rolling out to users globally. WhatsApp claims that this new feature will be available to everyone over the next few months. The Communities feature was announced earlier this year and WhatsApp has been testing it in different zones. This major feature update people will be able to connect on WhatsApp in the groups. Essentially, it is like a group of groups and sending a message in a single community will deliver it to all participants of each group.
WhatsApp Communities is a tool aimed at bringing neighborhoods, parents at a school, and workplaces in a single place. Users will be able to connect multiple groups together under one umbrella to organize group conversations on WhatsApp. The company has been working with over 50 organizations in 15 countries to build Communities.
How to use Communities?
To get started, users can tap on the new communities tab at the top of their chats on Android and at the bottom on iOS. From there, users will be able to start a new Community from scratch or add existing groups. Once in a community, users can easily switch between available groups to get the information, when they need it, and admins can send important updates to everyone in the Community.
Purpose of Communities
WhatsApp is aiming to increase the broadcasting capability of the platform. It claims this will set the bar for how organizations communicate. WhatsApp claims to offer a high level of privacy and security, even with the new feature. WhatsApp claims it will use its end-to-end encryption to keep messages, data out of reach from even the company itself.
Apart from Communities, WhatsApp also enhanced three major features.
32-person video calls
WhatsApp is increasing the number of members that can be allowed in a video call to 32. This feature is aimed at increasing the use of the platform for organisational purposes. WhatsApp will be able to take on competition from platforms like Zoom.
WhatsApp Group Size increased to 1024
WhatsApp is expanding the number of people allowed in a group. The threshold has been doubled from 512 to 1024. The bigger size of the group will allow WhatsApp to take on competition from an app like Telegram.
WhatsApp Group in-Chat Polls
WhatsApp is also introducing a new way to take polls within a group. Considering that the sixe of the groups is increasing substantially and even with features like Communities, polls can become a handy feature to vote on important issues within the group.