WhatsApp will now facilitate large group chats for definite topics or communities like schools or apartment buildings.
WhatsApp is adding new features that will allow users to increase their friend circle or grow to dislike their circle of friends. It is the dealer’s choice. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the planned feature known as communities in a post on Facebook, conveying that messaging is now a primary part of our digital lives for deeper interaction.
Zuckerberg said that “these communities rolled out to some of the WhatsApp users, and it will be completely available for all users in upcoming months. ” The new application feature facilitates users to make posts in selected group chats devoted to some specified communities or organizations. But like regular WhatsApp conversations, you will not get access to the phone numbers of all in the chat. Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp, said in an interview with The Verge that all communications would remain encrypted for the name of the chat and its predominant community.
This new feature of Whatsapp is like Nextdoor, Facebook messenger, and Slack, all three rolled into one feature. Meta gave some examples in its recent announcement post where multiple varied chats were present in the same apartment building. Another example showed work-based chats for various teams under the umbrella of a benevolent id group. Similarly, one picture shows a group of school parents with chat rooms dedicated to kids of various grades.
According to the post published, these communities will make it very easy for a school principal to bring every parent of the school together for sharing all must-read updates and set up groups about specified classes, voluntary requirements, and extracurricular activities.
For anyone who has spent some time with parents groups on Facebook, you can expect abuse, misinformation, and name-calling, same as any online community where kids are involved. In a Facebook post, Zuckerberg said that community messaging would have all basic protocols like one-to-one messaging and more extensions. So it is easy to communicate with groups of people for doing all things together. He further added that features on WhatsApp will soon be transferred to Instagram and Facebook.
Furthermore, the post also showed that it would allow 2GB of file sharing, emoji reactions, 32-person audio calls, and admins ability to delete posts. All these new features will be available over time. But it has not been mentioned either in the post or by Zuckerberg about the complete timeline about how the feature will get integrated into all existing applications or they will allow the already existing group chats to grow into communities chats.