WhatsApp announces multiple new features

Meta-owned,WhatsApp, most popular messaging platform, has announced Communities feature to enable users to bring together separate groups under one umbrella.  most popular messaging platform, has introduced a new feature called ‘Communities’ that will soon hit smartphones across the globe. WhatsApp is testing the new feature which will help users organise their groups. Furthermore, WhatsApp will also be providing 4 other updates to groups, included the much-awaited reaction to messages.

Communities will allow users to “receive updates sent to the entire Community and easily organize smaller discussion groups on what matters to them,” the company noted in an official blog post. The feature will also bring new tools for admins, including announcement messages that are sent to everyone and control over which groups can be included. , The feature will help WhatsApp admins to send alerts to thousands, with the groups, capped at 256 users, moving under a bigger structure of Communities. The feature is currently in the Beta phase and is not available as yet for all users.

With the feature, the messaging platform aims to make it easy for schools, local clubs, non-profit organizations to bring everyone under one roof and so there’s no communication gap. “We think Communities will make it easier for a school principal to bring all the parents of the school together to share must-read updates and set up groups about specific classes, extracurricular activities, or volunteer needs,” the messaging platform noted in the blog post. The new feature will be end-to-end encrypted, it said. WhatsApp head Will Cathcart told Reuters that the feature will carry safeguards and use anti-abuse tools like restricting forwarding limit. Users will not be able to search on WhatsApp for different Communities. WhatsApp will soon introduce four new features. These include:

Emoji reactions to messages on chats

Ability for Group admins to delete problematic messages from all users’ chats

The size of file sharing will increase to 2GB

Larger one-tap voice calls for up to 32 people

The Communities feature will be rolled out by WhatsApp in the upcoming months, parent Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg mentioned in a post. Similar feature will also come to other Meta products Facebook, Messenger and Instagram.