The CEO and founder of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, on Thursday, revealed that WhatsApp’s long anticipated ‘Communities’ feature is now available, adding that the new features will roll out today.
Mark also said that over the coming months, the feature will gradually become available to all users.
The update effectively adds Slack and Discord-type functionality, making it perfect for large groups, companies, and local communities like school parents. The Communities feature will use end-to-end encryption to handle features like in-chat polls, 32-person video calls, groups with up to 1024 participants, and Call Links.
Its goal is to provide structural support for all communication inside a single app Meta-owned messaging platform WhatsApp has rolled out new features, including expanding the size of group video calls to accommodate 32 people and allowing users to carry out polls in group chats.
Announcing the new features, Zuckerberg said, “Today, we are excited to share our vision for a new feature we are adding to WhatsApp called Communities. Since WhatsApp launched in 2009, we’ve been focused on how we can help people have the next best thing to an in-person conversation when they want to talk to an individual or a group of friends or family.”
He added, “We also frequently hear from people who are using WhatsApp to communicate and coordinate within a community.”
The communities feature changes in admin controls, and introduces support for sub-groups and announcement groups. The feature will also allow 32-person voice and video calls, larger file sharing, emoji reactions, and polls.
When the feature is launched, admins of existing group chats will be able to transition their group to ‘Communities’ or opt to re-create their group as a ‘Community’.
Mr Zuckerberg noted that the encryption aspects of the ‘Communities’ feature was to “raise the bar for how organisations communicate with a level of privacy and security not found anywhere else.”
The ‘Communities’ feature has been in testing with over 50 organisations in 15 countries to gain early feedback.
