WhatsApp has started rolling out its new community group feature to users of its beta Android app, WABetaInfo reports. This feature is presented as a ” major evolution of WhatsApp by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
WhatsApp’s Communities feature has been in development for almost a year now, but Meta officially hinted at its existence last April in a press release that detailed the changes coming to the messaging app. After several months of waiting for his arrival, WhatsApp has finally decided to start rolling out the feature.
According to a report by WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is currently testing Communities with some Android users. It seems like versions 2.22.19.3 (beta) and 2.22.19.2 (stable) are the first compatible. Those who received this update will find a new WhatsApp Communities tab that replaces the old Camera tab.
Also read: WhatsApp now lets you leave a group in ninja mode
What are Communities on WhatsApp?
For those unaware, the Communities feature will allow you to easily manage all your related groups and create subgroups for different topics. 10 subgroups could be created and each of them can contain up to 512 memberss. As soon as you create a Community on WhatsApp, a group is automatically created under it.
WhatsApp users can, for example, create a Community for a school with subgroups for each class or extracurricular activity. Admins can then send announcements to the entire group to reach all usersor only to certain groups.
A member of the community can decide to join a subgroup according to your interestss. He can also leave the subgroup whenever he wants without leaving the community itself. WhatsApp communities will also let you block certain people, report abuse, and more. Also, just like WhatsApp chats, they will be end-to-end encrypted.
If the test of this new feature is successful, WhatsApp may soon make this new function available to all users in the coming weeks.
Source: WABetaInfo