Communities and more: Whatsapp launches new functionality

From the house party to the university project – anyone who uses Whatsapp is likely to be a member of endless groups. In a new update, the messaging service is now bringing more groups. More precisely, Whatsapp wants to sort the groups in the future. Specifically, it is about the so-called communities, which Whatsapp wants to introduce with other functions in the next few months. Thanks to the new feature, it will be possible in the future to assign several groups to a master class. Then this community is called.

As a use case, Whatsapp lists in a file Blog post Like neighborhoods or businesses. Different regions can communicate with each other in their own channels. Perhaps this is similar to communication channels in Microsoft Teams. With the introduction of communities, Whatsapp wants to “elevate how businesses communicate privately and securely with each other”.

Whatsapp describes access to the new functionality as follows: “Click on the New Communities tab in your conversations; you will find this on Android at the top and on iOS at the bottom of the screen. There you can then create a new community or add existing groups.”

The WhatsApp Launched The Function “Communities”. (Source: Whatsapp blog post)

Also new is a poll tool in chats and the option to make video calls with up to 32 participants. Whatsapp also heralds the age of the Giga group: the new maximum number of members is 1024, double the previous number. Anyone yearning to create a group with thousands of favorite distant relatives and acquaintances will likely have to wait until 2023. Whatsapp plans to roll out the update in the next few months.

Whatsapp has been owned by Meta for quite some time. According to a report, Facebook’s parent company Meta plans to cut thousands of jobs – Read more about this here.