WhatsApp Communities are finally rolling out for everyone after staying in beta versions for months. Communities let you organize all your groups into one place to help create structured discussion groups for different topics or needs. This feature entered the testing phase earlier this year.
Welcome to Communities 👋
Now admins can bring related groups together in one place to keep conversations organized.
Organized. Private. Connected 🤝 pic.twitter.com/u7ZSmrs7Ys
— WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) November 3, 2022
Communities aim to help organizations, clubs, schools, and other private groups better communicate and stay organized. For instance, if you have multiple work-related groups, you will now be able to organize them all into one place and switch between them seamlessly.
Communities will have one main announcement group for the most important messages but chatting will be limited to sub-groups that the admin has approved. This will keep members from being spammed by messages from groups they are not related to.
Communities will also enable a few new features for the chatting app including admin controls, support for sub-groups and announcement groups, 32-person voice and video calls, larger file sharing, emoji reactions, and polls. It will let you have support groups of up to 1024 members and will also have end-to-end encryption.
It is worth mentioning that these features will be available outside of Communities as well once the feature starts rolling out.
Communities share some similarities with Facebook Groups as both of them support sub-groups, file sharing, extra admin powers, and more. But Facebook Groups are more often comprised of disconnected strangers with a common interest while WhatsApp Communities will most likely be used by members who already know one another in person since WhatsApp is more phone number based.
However, phone numbers will be hidden from the wider Community and will only be visible to admins and others who share the same sub-group.
Another difference between the two is that Facebook Groups are discoverable on the platform while WhatsApp Communities will be hidden. You can only join them through invites. Admins will also be able to move their existing groups into Communities.
WhatsApp Communities will start rolling out to Android and iOS devices all over the world in the upcoming weeks.
