WhatsApp has unveiled a new Communities feature, which adds a slew of unique updates to your group chats in the app, including sharing files, emoji reactions, group audio calls, and more.
WhatsApp offers a somewhat romanticized image of how Communities might assist diverse groups, with local communities, for example, being able to stay in touch through various aspects within the greater Community framework.
According to WhatsApp:
“Parents at a school, local clubs, and even small workplaces now rely on WhatsApp as their primary way of keeping people up to date. These groups need private ways of communicating that are distinct from social media but provide more tools to facilitate real-time conversations than e-mail or broadcast only channels.”
WhatsApp Communities attempts to meet this requirement by allowing users to create overall Communities that can then contain a variety of smaller, more specific chats. Every WhatsApp Community will have a summary of what the Community is for, as well as a menu of sub-groups that members can join inside that Community. That might open up new methods to connect with the app while also allowing for new types of discovery, which could be a really useful way to remain in touch.
And because it’s all encrypted, you can feel safe having whatever chats you want without worrying about your information being exposed publicly or even outside of each individual chat.
WhatsApp has also included some new methods and capabilities to help improve that connection, as previously mentioned. With users able to drop in at any moment, 32-person audio chats could be a fantastic way to improve connection and engagement, while WhatsApp is also providing a number of admin tools, including moderation controls, to assist manage each discussion.
In terms of security, WhatsApp will keep its message forwarding limits in place to prevent Communities from being spammed (a huge danger), and Communities will not be searchable in the app. You’ll need to be invited by someone you know, which reduces the possibility of the option being abused.
Only Community admins will then be able to send messages to all Community members, which is referred to as the announcement group for the community, in order to reduce noise and overload. For the time being, WhatsApp will offer community announcements for tens of thousands of users. Members of the community can communicate in subgroups as well that admins have formed or approved.
Community administrators will also be able to unlink groups from the Community and, if desired, remove individual members from the Community entirely.
It appears to be a decent bundle, with a number of changes that will undoubtedly improve the value of WhatsApp group chats and allow for more connections in the program.
