WhatsApp is introducing a new feature called "Communities" designed to let institutions such as schools and neighborhoods communicate and share media.
WhatsApp Launches 'Communities' Feature Which Creates a Way for Admins To Message Thousands
WhatsApp, which has been predominantly used for messaging people since before Facebook bought it in 2014, can only accommodate 256 participants in a group chat, as per the report of The Verge.
However, the app recently announced a new feature that will let thousands participate in a Community that hosts multiple sub-group chats.
The idea is that different organizations, ranging from a school to a company whose employees interact using WhatsApp, will be able to more quickly organize discussions and have their administrators message everyone across multiple groups.
According to an official WhatsApp post on Thursday, April 14, Communities will be inherently private and end-to-end encrypted.
More Details Regarding WhatsApp's 'Communities' Feature
CNET mentioned that the Communities feature is WhatsApp's answer to Telegram's massive Groups and Channels.
However, while Communities may at first blush draw the comparison to Telegram channels or even Discord, The Verge wanted to note that there are some key differences between them.
In WhatsApp, only admins can broadcast to an entire Community, whereas users are limited to the sub-groups they are a part of. Your phone number is required to join a Community, and WhatsApp does not allow Communities to be found through search engines or recommended by an algorithm.
Head of WhatsApp, Will Cathcart, said that WhatsApp is currently working out the specifics of how Communities will work, partly based on comments from early testers who have been asked to participate. He would only say that a Community can have "thousands" of members and that the number of admins a single Community can have with one-to-all communications access is "limited," according to a report by The Verge.
Meanwhile, The Independent mentioned that WhatsApp's Communities feature will have limitations. People will only be able to forward messages to one group at a time, for example, in order to make it more difficult to distribute undesirable content, such as false news or spam as quickly.
The feature is now being tested and will be rolled out over the next few months on WhatsApp and Facebook. It was said that similar features would be coming to Messenger, Facebook, and Instagram.
WhatsApp Will Add More Features Aside From The 'Communities' Feature
As per the report of CNET, WhatsApp is also introducing new features that have been available in competing messaging apps for some time, such as emoji reactions and the ability to make audio calls with up to 32 people, up from the previous limit of eight.
Users can now exchange larger files and media, with a 2 GB file size limit, up from 100 MB previously. Additionally, group administrators will now have the ability to erase messages from everyone's chats if, for example, someone says something offensive.
