WhatsApp announces Communities, 4 new features for groups

WhatsApp announced Communities feature to enable users to bring together separate groups under one umbrella. The Meta-owned messaging platform also unveiled four new features for groups, including admin delete, large voice calls, message reactions, and large file sharing.

WhatsApp Communities feature announced

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.

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.

New WhatsApp groups features

WhatsApp adds four new features for groups, including reactions, admin delete, file sharing and large voice calls.

--Admin Delete WhatsApp will now allow group admins to be able to remove errant or problematic messages from everyone’s chats.--File Sharing The messaging platform is also increasing file sharing to support files up to 2 gigabytes so people can easily collaborate on a project.

--Larger Voice Calls WhatsApp previously extended group calls to 8 members from 4. Now, the company has introduced voice calling for up to 32 members at a time. WhatsApp has also redesigned the voice calls interface.

As for the availability, WhatsApp said that these features will be "rolling out in the coming weeks so people can start trying them out even before Communities are ready". These features will be rolled out for beta users, followed by stable release.