Meta-owned and global messaging platform WhatsApp is bringing a new feature to its app – Communities.
The popular messaging platform has been busy this year and the latest feature addition is a new Communities tab that sits next to the regular Chats tab on the iOS and Android app.
The Communities tab brings together groups to be organised under one roof especially if they share common topics. Communities can have multiple threads, announcement channels, Admin-approved subgroups and more.
If you’re in a Community, you’ll be able to receive updates sent there and then organize smaller discussion groups.
Admins on WhatsApp Communities have new tools including sending announcement messages to everyone and also controlling which groups can be added to the community.
Group admins will be able to move their current groups to Communities or start a new Community from scratch by sending their members invite links.
Chats in Communities will be end-to-end encrypted to keep the chats private and secure.
Meta added that they’ll disband Communities breaking the law by doing illegal things such as coordinating violence, engaging in human trafficking and sharing child sexual abuse material. Community members and admins will also be banned.
To stop the spread of misinformation, members in Communities will only be able to forward to one group at a time.
Meta shared that they have been testing Communities with over 50 organizations in 15 countries to refine the feature before today’s global rollout.
Aside from the new Communities tab, WhatsApp shared new improvements to its Groups feature including allowing 32-person video calls and Polls to help with decision-making without annoying everyone in the group.
The Communities feature will come in handy to the over 3 billion users who use the app daily to send almost 200 billion messages and 7 billion voice messages.
Communities Tab now joins the rest of the new features WhatsApp has introduced this year including sorting messages by unread count, the ability to silently leave groups, new privacy options under Last Seen settings, Status redesign, increasing file transfer limit and more.
