WhatsApp users have been given access to new features including polls, larger group calls and a function that allows users to bundle chats together by topic. The Communities feature allows users to organise different group chats together under a single main umbrella, for example, their children’s school or the street they live on, with Community admins able to share messages with people across all groups.
It was announced earlier this year and has now gone live in the UK after testing. Mark Zuckerberg, the head of WhatsApp’s parent company, Meta, said: “Today we’re launching Communities on WhatsApp.
“It makes groups better by enabling sub-groups, multiple threads, announcement channels, and more. We’re also rolling out polls and 32-person video calling too. All secured by end-to-end encryption so your messages stay private.”
The Communities feature can be accessed by a tab at the top of chats on Android and the at the bottom of chats on iPhone. WhatsApp is also doubling the amount of people allowed in a group to 1,024.
A WhatsApp blogpost read: “With Communities, we’re aiming to raise the bar for how organisations communicate with a level of privacy and security not found anywhere else. The alternatives available today require trusting apps or software companies with a copy of their messages – and we think they deserve the higher level of security provided by end-to-end encryption.
“Once you’re in a community, you can easily switch between available groups to get the information you need, when you need it, and admins can send important updates to everyone in the Community.”
