WhatsApp, the most widely used instant messaging application in the world, incorporates a new functionality called communities. On April 14, the Meta company announced that it would provide the application with a new way of managing groups with higher volumes in terms of the number of participants.

Although it also communicated, more recently, the update of the maximum number of members of a group to 512, the company understands that there are realities in which this limit is insufficient.

An example of this are neighborhood associations, condominiums, schools, clubs, companies with multiple branches, non-profit organizations, among others. So, to attend to these requests, it will soon launch the function that promises to facilitate this management.

How Communities will work on WhatsApp

Meta outlines the Communities as a large virtual container, made up of multiple groups. As you can see, the functionality does not come to replace the groups but to integrate them taking into account some topic of collective interest.

The application allows you to deal with topics of general interest within the communities and the more specific ones within the groups, thus eliminating the need to replicate aspects of the discussion.

As with groups, Communities will have an administrator. These will be in charge of defining which groups will integrate the community, send general announcements or to specific groups, as well as eliminate messages and files that are not appropriate for the interest of the audience.

When someone invites you to be part of a community, you will see in their environment that they have a background image, a profile image, their name, as well as a description and an indication of the number of groups that make it up.

It will also show a section of the groups belonging to that community in which you are associated and will show them as Your groups, as well as the others that are part of it, but in which you do not have participation and are defined as Other groups.

Communities, like groups, will be private. For this reason, WhatsApp will not facilitate its discovery, as in the case of other social networks in which the groups are displayed by theme.

This quality allows us to offer a higher level of security to the users of the application.

How Security and Privacy will be Managed in the Communities

The Communities will also enjoy end-to-end encryption. This is one of the qualities that makes WhatsApp stand out from other messaging applications, since it means that only those involved in the conversation can know its content.

Within the Communities, as in the groups, you can report messages, so that they can be analyzed by the company and sanctioning actions taken, if applicable.

Another security measure that is implemented in the Communities is that they will not allow to observe the telephone numbers between the participants. Only the administrators will be able to know them and the members of the group to which they belong.

Although Meta has made this announcement, the exact date when the functionality will be active is unknown.

What they did report is that so far it is in a trial period and that in the coming months it will be available in some countries. Gradually it will be integrated to the rest of the users worldwide.

Other News of Interest for WhatsApp Groups

In addition to this functionality, some others are already available through the latest WhatsApp update. Now you can add reactions with Emojis in your conversations.

With this, the company seeks to offer fun and fast forms of communication, which reduce the load of messages. WhatsApp also allows you to send files of up to 2Gb, maintaining end-to-end encryption.

The previous limit, which was 100Mb, made some conversations that had to be handled around certain documents somewhat difficult and forced users to leave the application environment.

WhatsApp also included a counter that allows you to see how far along you are in uploading or downloading files.

Lastly, calls within groups will support up to 32 participants. This communication space will enjoy a new design aimed at improving the user experience.

Conclusion

WhatsApp is renewed with the integration of new features, some are already in use and others are expected to happen in the course of the months.

The Communities will arrive soon, integrating a good number of groups and thus increasing the number of people who can participate in a conversation.

Through the Communities it will be possible for the administrator to send messages in bulk and delete those that he considers may affect the flow of the conversation. In addition to adding and removing groups from the community.

Users will not fear because they will continue to enjoy end-to-end encryption, a quality that makes WhatsApp stand out from other applications. Telephone numbers may not be observed by other members of the Community either, for greater peace of mind.

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