In these months, we have published several details about a new feature under development that allows managing your groups better: communities. Today, Mark Zuckerberg is releasing new details about WhatsApp Communities for the first time, defining them as a major evolution of messaging on WhatsApp.
| Common questions | Answers |
|---|---|
| Name of the feature? | WhatsApp Communities |
| Status? | Under development |
| Availability? | WhatsApp is working on bringing communities for a future update of the app. |
| I have installed the latest version of the app, but I do not see any feature about WhatsApp Communities. Why? | This feature is under development, so it is not ready to be released to beta testers, but you can discover some details from Mark Zuckerberg and their plans for the future. |
| Previous news? | WhatsApp beta for Android 2.22.9.12: what’s new? WhatsApp is working on creating business orders for customers, in a future update of the app! |
Mark Zuckerberg just published on Facebook some important details about the development of WhatsApp Communities, a feature that allows managing your WhatsApp groups better by using some admin tools. In these months, we have already spotted some information about WhatsApp Communities, such as the ability to bring related groups together in a new section of the app, but Mark Zuckerberg is giving official news today. Based on Mark Zuckerberg’s post it seems clear that he is really heavily involved in the product vision as an integral part of the development of WhatsApp Communities with the team: they have been working on the next generation of private messaging by introducing communities.
WhatsApp Communities do not pivot to a public social network, but they will let us communicate with other people privately and better, not only with close contacts: for example, they will be very useful for school communities to group all their teaching classes, with important announcements shared with parents. WhatsApp Communities are a better organization for our WhatsApp groups to find information easily and to stay in touch with people.
WhatsApp will also be able to end communities as they are already doing with groups by using advanced machine learning technology that automatically looks for suspicious community and subgroup names, descriptions, and reports submitted by community members.
Mark Zuckerberg and WhatsApp have also announced their future plans for new features on the app:
- Message reactions: the ability to react to messages has been already released to some users on WhatsApp beta for Android, and it is coming for more people in the next updates.
- Large File Sharing: after releasing the ability to share media files up to 2GB to some users in Argentina, it may be possible to use the same feature in other countries in the future.
- Bigger group calls: WhatsApp will increase the group call limit to 32 participants in the future, but note that group calls may also have lower participant limits that vary, based on which device everyone in the call is using.
- Admin Delete for everyone: group admins will be able to delete messages for everyone in groups in the future, for moderation reasons.
- Silently leave groups: group participants will be able to silently leave a group in the future.
- New group size: WhatsApp is planning to increase the group capacity when they bring more tools to admins and users in the future.
Messaging and calls features are secured by end-to-end encryption so nobody, not even WhatsApp or their parent company, Meta, can read or listen to your private communication. Further information is available on Mark Zuckerberg’s post and the official blog post.
Mark Zuckerberg has very high perspectives for the future and he claims that the company is starting to test WhatsApp Communities today and roll this feature out very slowly to users over the coming months.
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