WhatsApp has announced a new feature called Communities to bring people with similar interests together. The primary aim of introducing Communities is to allow users to have larger discussion groups. A community will be basically a collection of similar groups. Admins can send messages to all groups at once while groups can keep having their different conversations. Admins can control what groups can be included in an announcement.
WhatsApp Communities won’t be discoverable. So, no one can search and join WhatsApp Communities they find interesting. You will have to be invited to the groups to join Communities. WhatsApp will also have a limit forwards in communities to avoid the spread of misinformation.
Facebook already has Facebook Groups for the same thing but Facebook is now losing engagement. People aren’t much active there as they used to be. So, adding Communities to WhatsApp makes sense. People already manage communities on WhatsApp by making groups but the Communities feature will surely make it better.
The company has also announced several improvements for groups. WhatsApp groups are now getting Emoji reactions. Group admins will now be able to remove problematic messages from everyone’s chats. The file-sharing limit has been increased up to 2 gigabytes. Groups are also getting one-tap voice calling for up to 32 people.
New Group features will be rolling out this week and will take some time to reach all users.
