Back in April of this year, WhatsApp unveiled their new “Communities” feature, which would enable users to organise multiple chat groups together under a single umbrella community, and allow administrators to share updates more effectively.

Now, this feature is finally starting to roll out to users, with Malaysians having been granted early access, making us one of the first countries to have it available.

At time of publication, no date has been provided for the eventual global rollout of the Communities feature.

With the introduction of Communities, WhatsApp administrators will be provided a new set of tools, including controls over which groups will be allowed to join a community, along with the ability to create smaller groups within the community.

“Community admins can also send announcements to all members through an announcement Group.

“Additionally, only admins can add members to a Community or send an invite link, and will have the ability to remove members where needed,” the messaging service wrote in a press release.

WhatsApp also shared that like the existing one-to-one and group chats, all messages in Communities are protected by end-to-end encryption.

Currently, not all Malaysian users have access to the feature as it is still rolling out in the country, according to Meta, which added that Communities will be made available over the coming weeks as part of the gradual rollout.

The messaging service has also added features such as emoji reactions to messages, the ability for admins to delete messages of group members, the sharing of files up to 2GB in size, and larger voice calls with up to 32 participants.

Source:
courtesy of THE STAR

by CHRISTOPHER FAM

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