How WhatsApp Communities work
You might know how groups work on social media platforms like Facebook, where people can connect over common interests. In 2022, WhatsApp rolled out its own groups feature with a ton of flexibility to create groups and sub-groups, share files, take polls and more.
What’s different about WhatsApp Communities?
Users have been able to create and participate in groups for a long time in WhatsApp, but WhatsApp Communities adds some useful features.
First, WhatsApp Communities allows users to create similar groups under one community. For instance, a school could use WhatsApp Communities as an umbrella for other groups that have to do with the school. A school might create a group for each year level, sports team, parent groups and so on. All those similar groups can now be placed into a single community while preserving their exclusivity.
This is a useful feature for a number of reasons. For one, being able to compile different groups under one community is great for keeping things organised. It makes communication easier and improves collaboration, and gives admins greater control.
A closer look at WhatsApp Communities’ features
Here are more features of WhatsApp Communities:
- Privacy
WhatsApp will continue with end-to-end encryption to keep your communication private, and phone numbers won’t be visible across communities – they will only be visible in groups. Also, if a message has already been forwarded, it can only be forwarded to one group. According to WhatsApp, this can help reduce misinformation. - No discoverability
In line with the privacy mantra, WhatsApp Communities won’t be able to be discovered through search. Users will have to know about the group before joining. - Admin delete
Admins have been given more control, including the ability to delete messages for everyone. - Admin announcements
Admins can use WhatsApp Communities to send messages to all groups (or some groups) at once. - User controls
Users are still allowed to decide who can add them to a group, block other users, leave an entire community (not just a group), report abuse, etc.
While other messaging and group apps cater to larger groups, WhatsApp Communities focuses on smaller, close-knit groups like families, close friends, teams, organisations, etc. The privacy ensures users can only join communities and groups they are familiar with.
Other new WhatsApp upgrades
In addition to WhatsApp Communities, WhatsApp plans to roll out more features for non-group users, some of which are already live. Here’s a look at three significant new features:
- Reactions
Instead of replying to a message with an emoji, users can now react to the message instead – much like a Facebook ‘like’. - Share large files
WhatsApp has had a 100 megabytes limit for a long time, but now you can share files up to 2 gigabytes. - Group phone calls
The one-tap call feature can now include up to 32 users at once.
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About WhatsApp
The groups sector of the social media market has been dominated by messaging apps, which are a hit amongst social media users worldwide. Apps like Telegram have carved a niche in this regard, giving users a wide range of features and groups to connect across borders.
But one of the most popular messaging apps to date (if not the most popular) is WhatsApp. The app was launched in 2009 and quickly became known for its ease of use when it comes to messaging, video calls, and group chats, giving it significant appeal amongst users globally.
In Australia, WhatsApp has become the most-used messaging app with over 10 million users, according to Social Media Statistics Australia. In fact, WhatsApp is now the third most used social network in Australia, showing its strengths are not just limited to messaging alone.
WhatsApp’s popularity stretches beyond Australia. According to Statista, as of April 2022, the messaging app had approximately 2.44 billion unique active users worldwide.
According to Statista, WhatsApp unique active users continue to grow. src
Groups like WhatsApp Communities are becoming invaluable
There is a reason Mark Zuckerberg paid a whopping $16bn to purchase WhatsApp back in 2015 – an increasing proportion of the time we spend on our mobile phones is being spent on messaging apps.
Communications apps are also strategically important. When chats become the way we interact with brands online (a day that is not too far away), we’ll likely engage with them through apps like WhatsApp.
Whatsapp communities are the evolution of its existing group chat features with some extra useful features and admin privileges. The upgrades to Communities is another step forward for Meta in this significantly important element of its digital footprint.