WhatsApp starts rolling out its communities

Communities are coming to WhatsApp, but the rollout will take a few months.

To retain its users and attract new ones, social applications, whatever they may be, must be constantly updated. Both to keep users and their data safe, and to offer them an even more successful and flexible experience. This is a permanent job. Deployments happen frequently, whether it’s fixing bugs, closing security vulnerabilities, or adding features. For example, in WhatsApp, users will soon receive rights to communities.

Communities come to WhatsApp

It’s been many months since the feature was announced last April, but WhatsApp communities are finally a reality. Almost. Indeed, in a post on its blog, the company explains that the rollout of communities has begun around the world, but that the feature will only be available to everyone “in the coming months.”

Communities are very large groups of users that can form several subgroups around a central theme. WhatsApp suggests that this feature is ideal for neighborhood communities, parents of students from the same school, same class, or colleagues from the same company.

But the rollout will take several months

If you have access to this feature, you will see a new “Communities”tab in your app at the top (on Android) or bottom (on iOS) of the screen. You can then create a new community or add existing groups to a community you’ve already created.

WhatsApp also indicates that communities are protected by end-to-end encryption, which is not the case in Slack and Discord, for example.

WhatsApp also recently added new non-community features. For example, you can create polls. Groups have also been expanded to accommodate up to 1024 users. Video calls, on the other hand, can have a maximum of 32 participants.