Meta Introduces Communities On WhatsApp

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday announced Communities on WhatsApp. The new feature is expected to make the ‘Group’ experience better on the messaging platform.

The feature will allow Communities like neighborhoods, parents at a school, and workplaces connect with multiple groups together under one umbrella to organize group conversations on WhatsApp. 

WhatsApp has been building Communities, a major update to how people will be able to connect on WhatsApp in the groups that matter to them. 

“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 too. All secured by end-to-end encryption so your messages stay private.” – Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO, Meta.

To get started, users can tap on the new communities tab at the top of their chats on Android and at the bottom on iOS. From there, users will be able to start a new Community from scratch or add existing groups. Once in a community, users can easily switch between available groups to get the information you need, when they need it, and admins can send important updates to everyone in the Community. 

The ‘communities’ feature is expected to start rolling out to users globally and will be available to everyone over the next few months. 

In addition, WhatsApp is also releasing three more features: the ability to create in-chat polls, 32-person video calling, and groups with up to 1024 users. Just like emoji reactions, larger file sharing, and admin delete, these features can be used in any group but will be particularly helpful for Communities.