WhatsApp Announces 'Communities' Feature to Organize Groups for Work, School

WhatsApp is building a 'Communities' feature to organise groups for businesses, and schools, the messaging app announced on Thursday.

The new feature will also include new tools for admins such as announcement messages that are sent to everyone. In addition, they can control which groups can be included.

“At the center of every Community on WhatsApp is a description and menu of groups that people can choose to join. This provides a structure and organization to conversations among larger and more complex groups that allow people to focus on what matters to them,” the company said.

“That way people can receive updates sent to the entire Community and easily organise smaller discussion groups on what matters to them.”.

“Close-knit groups — schools, members of a religious congregation, even businesses — very much want and need to be able to have secure and private conversations without WhatsApp monitoring their every word,” it added.

Under the new feature, the messages will be protected with end-to-end encryption.

The platform is also set to roll out a slew of new features in the coming weeks for WhatsApp groups before launching Communities.

It will introduce one-tap voice calling for up to 32 people in a group, group admins will be able to remove annoying messages from everyone’s chats and emoji reactions like those on Instagram will be added to the app.

“While other apps are building chats for hundreds of thousands of people, we’re choosing to focus on supporting the groups that are part of our daily lives,” WhatsApp noted.

“It’s early days for Communities on WhatsApp and building the new features to support them will be a major focus of ours for the year to come.”