WhatsApp’s long anticipated ‘Communities’ feature is now available
Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive officer and creator of Meta, made the announcement today that the much-anticipated “Communities” feature of WhatsApp is now available. Today is the day that the feature is expected to go live. Mark has indicated that the feature would gradually become accessible to all users over the course of the upcoming months. This update basically provides capabilities similar to those of Slack and Discord, which makes it ideal for use by large organizations, companies, and local communities such as those made up of school parents.
WhatsApp Rolls Out “Communities” With Support For 32-Person Video Calls, 1024 Group Members, & More
The Communities feature will make use of end-to-end encryption in order to manage features like in-chat polls, video calls for up to 32 participants, groups with up to 1024 members, and call links. Its purpose is to offer structural backing for any and all communication that takes place within a single app.
“Today we’re launching communities on WhatsApp. It makes groups better by enabling sub-groups, multiple threads, announcement channels, and more. We’re also rolling out polls and 32-person video calling. “All secured by end-to-end encryption so your messages stay private,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on the launch of Communities.
“Communities on WhatsApp will enable people to bring together separate groups under one umbrella with a structure that works for them.” “That way people can receive updates sent to the entire community and easily organize smaller discussion groups on what matters to them,” the company said.
Communities will also come equipped with powerful new admin tools, such as the capability to regulate which groups can be added and to broadcast announcements to the whole user base. In addition to being able to delete inappropriate chats and content, administrators of the community will also have the right to remove a member’s account from the community as well as delink groups that are associated with it.
Users, on the other hand, will have the ability to exercise a greater degree of control over matters such as who can add them to a group, how they can leave communities, and how they can leave a group without being noticed. Meta has dedicated a significant amount of time and resources to ensuring that Communities provides a “degree of privacy and security not available anywhere else” for the communication that occurs between the many different organizations and places of employment. This new development follows closely on the heels of WhatsApp’s release of the “Call Links” feature, which enables users to create a voice or video call link and share it with their intended contacts. As soon as those contacts click the link, they will be added to the call that is already in progress.