To meet the demand of users around the world, WhatsApp will soon be rolling out a highly anticipated innovative new feature. Users will be able to more easily join similar interest groups and have more meaningful conversations through Communities…
WhatsApp favors group chats
For several months, Meta has invested heavily in setting up and deploying the metavers to become the future of social networks. But in the short term, it is rolling out new features to further connect users in a more personal way.
WhatsApp, for example, announced the development of “Communities” for favor group discussions in the application. A previously unreleased version of the feature was first spotted last year, but the company hadn’t confirmed its existence until now.
Concretely, the communities would be like a directory of groups in order to better manage its own community with various groups connected by common interests. Anyone can create a community and invite multiple groups to join. But the groups will only be part of the community if their respective administrators accept the invitation.
This seems ideal for organizations like big businesses, schools, local clubs, or even non-profits that might have dozens or even hundreds of WhatsApp groups.
Mark Zuckerberg himself officially announced on his page Facebook the launch of the WhatsApp Communities test. The feature will appear as a new tab in the app (such as Status and Calls).
The company didn’t share details on exactly how these groups will be formed, but a spokesperson said the idea is to give ‘close-knit groups’ more ways to communicate beyond chat features. currently offered by the application.
Some Risks of Communities on WhatsApp
In 2017, Zuckerberg attempted to reorient Facebook around groups and “meaningful communities.” The company had already started creating a new feature for groups and encouraging users to join as part of its new mission to “bring the world together”. Zuckerberg now appears to be following the same strategy for WhatsApp.
But making the app more like groups on Facebook comes with some risks. Groups are indeed considered to be the main sources of fake news or misinformation on the platform. In response, the company is already working on a number of security-focused updates as well as new controls for administrators to delete messages that exceed certain limits.
More features to come
Alongside communities, WhatsApp deploys interesting features already present in competing messaging apps:
- She launches the emoji reactions;
- It extends voice calls to 32 participants, compared to 8 previously;
- It allows you to share larger files up to 2 GB, against 100 MB previously;
- It allows group admins to delete inappropriate or problematic messages for all chat members.
While all of these features will roll out in the coming weeks, the company has yet to say when Communities will be added to the app. What is certain is that they will be deployed gradually according to Mark Zuckerberg and on Messenger, Facebook and Instagram as well at some point.
Source : WhatsApp