WhatsApp announced the creation of Communities, a space to organize group chats

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WhatsApp announced the creation of Communities, a virtual space where different group and broadcast chats can meet. Communities will be a kind of umbrella, the same virtual structure that will favor the communication and management of different conversations around the same theme.

These communities could serve, for example, in the school environment. Thus, the directors of a school, for example, could create a community called “school” where they would include the different group or broadcast chats they have, with parents of students, teachers, administrative staff, etc.

“We build ad channels so admins can communicate with the different chats. Also there are group directories so that users can join the topics that are relevant to them”, explained Jyoti Sood, WhatsApp Product Manager, in the framework of a conference in which she participated TechMarkup.

Users will be able to receive updates sent to the entire Community and easily organize smaller discussion groups on issues that interest them.

Communities will also contain new tools for administrators, including notifications that are sent to everyone and it will also give you more control over which groups can be included or not.

“There will be an announcement channel, so from the school’s administration panel they will have a space from which everyone can be reached. Administrators will be able to send messages that will reach anyone in the communitythat is to say, to all the groups related to that community”, stressed Sood, within the framework of the talk.

In turn, the released statement highlights that “the Communities option will make the task of the director of a school easier, since you will be able to share the most important updates with all parents, and create separate groups for specific classes, extracurricular activities, or volunteer needs.”

Although the examples focused on the use that could be given to the tool in the school environment, the truth is that It could also be used in other contexts such as clubs, work and even in building consortiums. Communities works like a big panel that groups different conversations around the same topic or space.

The tool will be available in the coming months worldwide but there is no precise date yet. This is what Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, had to say: in the post he made announcing this news:

“We are going to start rolling this out slowly, but I expect it to be a major evolution for WhatsApp and for online communication in general. In the same way that social networks took the basic technology behind the Internet and adapted it so that anyone could find people and content on the web, I believe that community messaging will take the basic protocols behind one-to-one messaging and extend them to that you can more easily communicate with groups of people to get things done together.”

The main benefits of Communities

1. Better organize different group chats and broadcast groups around a theme

2. Help prioritize content

3. Announcement channels for administrators to share relevant information.

4. It has a directory of groups linked to the same community so that members of the community can easily find and join them.

5. Provides the possibility for users to generate new chats, make calls and add new users

Other benefits that will come to WhatsApp in the coming weeks. Some are already beta-ready:

reactions: Reactions with emojis will reach all WhatsApp users so that people can quickly share their opinion without having to resort to text.

Option to delete content by administrator: Group admins will be able to delete messages in group chats that they deem unrelevant or problematic.

Share files: 2GB files will now be shareable so people can easily collaborate on projects. This option is currently only available in Argentina but will gradually reach the rest of the world.

Calls with more participants: One-touch voice calls will be added to talk to up to 32 people. They will have a totally new design.