According to the company, this is part of its ongoing endeavour to let users interact with individuals or groups since its start in 2009.
Jyoti Sood, WhatsApp’s product manager, explained that social organisations, such as neighbourhood, schools, and companies rely on groups that are often more sophisticated than ordinary ones.
As a result, they will require improved organisational management and engagement technologies. Organisations such as schools, local clubs, and non-profit organisations increasingly rely on WhatsApp to make their lives simpler since the pandemic has caused communities to interact while being separated.
Jyoti Sood
With these new features, people can engage with groups and receive updates broadcast from the community, making it easier to organise smaller group discussions.
Admins also can control which groups are featured in announcement messages.
Schools will be able to send important updates to parents about individual classrooms, extracurricular activities, and volunteer requirements more easily using the Communities feature.
Current/Future WhatsApp’s Communities features are:
- Message Reactions: replace flooding chats with emoji reactions
- Admin Delete: allows admins to remove unwanted messages from everyone’s chats
- Bigger Group Calls: allow up to 32 people to call with a new design for better live talking
- Admin Deleted for Everyone: group admins will be able to delete messages for everyone in groups
- Silently Leave Groups: group participants will be able to silently leave group
- New Group Size: Larger group capacity
Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg stated in a post on Thursday that communities features will be rolled out over the coming months. Meta would be working on community messaging tools for Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram.