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

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

These communities could serve, for example, in the school environment. Thus, school managers, 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 that administrators can communicate with different chats. There are also group directories so that users can join topics that are relevant to them,” explained Jyoti Sood, WhatsApp Product Manager, as part of a conference in which Infobae participated.

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 will also give them greater control over which groups can or cannot be included.

“There will be an announcement channel, so from the school 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 community, that is to say to all groups related to that community,” said Sood, as part of the talk.

In turn, the statement released emphasizes that “the Communities option will make the task easier for the principal of a school, since he 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 how the tool could be used in the school environment, the truth is that it could also be used in other contexts such as clubs, work and even in building consortia. Communities works as a large 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, said in his post announcing this news:

“We are going to start implementing this slowly, but I hope it will be an important evolution for WhatsApp and in general for online communication. Just as social networks took the basic technology behind the Internet and adapted it so that anyone could find people and content on the net, I think community messaging will take the basic protocols behind one-to-one messaging and expand them so that you can more easily communicate with groups of people to do things together.”

The main benefits of Communities

1. Better organize different group chats and outreach groups around a topic

2. Help prioritize content

3. Ad channels for administrators to share relevant information

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

5. Provides the ability 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 ready for beta versions:

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 administrators will be able to delete, in group chats, messages they consider to be irrelevant or problematic.

File Sharing: 2GB files can now be shared 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 completely new design.

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