.WhatsApp Groups are one of the popular ways many people around the world communicate with one another. At one time, Facebook said there were over a billion groups on WhatsApp, which was as numerous as the number of active users on the platform.
Just like any feature, there is room to grow and that is what WhatsApp is doing to groups. They have introduced 5 new features that are being rolled out to WhatsApp Groups and are being rolled out to Android and iPhone users today:
Group descriptions
WhatsApp Groups will now have group descriptions, which are short bios that describe what the group is about in relation to its guidelines or topics discussed. This will help admins in particular since they wouldn’t have to explain everytime the purpose of the group.
Admin controls
WhatsApp admins have been given a new control under group settings that allows them to do a bunch of things that includes restricting who can change the groups’s icon, description or subject.
Participant search
You’ll now be able to find anyone in a group (especially in those large groups) by searching for them on the group info page. WhatsApp Groups can have as many as 256 people and this will make this easy to do.
Group catch up
We are not always on our phones and in the commute home from work for example, you might switch on your data and get bombarded by conversations on WhatsApp. Now with Group catch up, you can quickly catch up on messages that people mentioned you by tapping on the new @ button that appears at the bottom right.
Other neat features
Admins also can remove admin permissions from other participants and in a welcome change, group creators cannot be removed from the group they started. This is a feature we have seen on Telegram and it is quite neat.
Another welcome feature is that now WhatsApp has added a feature that would protect you from being repeatedly added to groups you left. This is important since people have abused this severally where you leave a Group chat and you are added back, which can be annoying.
