Tech Crunch reports: Meta is throwing billions of dollars into building out the metaverse as the future of social networking, but in the near term, the tech giant is looking toward the power of messaging to connect users in a more personal way. On that front, the company has introduced its plans for a significant update to its WhatsApp messaging app that will allow users to now not only connect privately with friends and family, as before, but also participate in larger discussion groups, called Communities. These groups aim to serve as a more feature-rich replacement for people’s larger group chats with added support for tools like file sharing, 32-person group calls and emoji reactions, as well as admin tools and moderation controls, among other things.
The feature has been under development for some time as the next big iteration for the WhatsApp platform, meant to capitalize on the app’s existing end-to-end encryption as well as users’ growing desire to join private communities outside of larger social platforms, like Facebook.
In particular, Communities could present a challenge to other messaging apps like Telegram — which has recently become a prominent player in communications related to the Russia-Ukraine war — in addition to other private messaging platforms, like iMessage or Signal, as well as apps like GroupMe, Band, Remind and others used to communicate with groups.
“It’s been clear for a while that the way we communicate online is changing,” wrote Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, announcing the news in a post on his public Facebook profile. “Most of us use social networks and feeds to discover interesting content and stay updated. But for a deeper level of interaction, messaging has become the center of our digital lives. It’s more intimate and private, and with encryption it’s more secure too,” he added.
The feature may initially lead to some comparisons with Facebook Groups, a more private networking tool on Facebook that now reaches 1.8 billion users on a monthly basis, per Facebook’s most recent public data. Similar to Groups, WhatsApp Communities would allow organizations, clubs or schools to create networks for their members to interact and share news and updates. And like Facebook Groups recently added, Communities also support the ability to host sub-groups.
For example, a volunteer organization could create a sub-group discussion for those involved with a particular project, like a food drive. A parents group could host sub-groups based on their kids’ ages. A school could include sub-groups for different grades or extracurricular activities. A club could host sub-groups dedicated to planning their various events and activities. And so on.
But while Facebook Groups may see some overlap with WhatsApp Communities, the two are not designed for the same purpose. Facebook’s product is often used by larger, otherwise disconnected strangers who share a common interest. WhatsApp Communities, meanwhile, focus on more private and personal groups — including those where members may already be connected in other ways, including in the real world.
Explains Head of WhatsApp Will Cathcart of the difference, “we’re phone number-based.”
“When you’re interacting with people on WhatsApp, there’s a necessary comfort with exchanging your phone number with them. So that points towards communities where you know these people in real life,” he says. “Maybe you don’t have every phone number of every parent in your kid’s class, but you’re comfortable interacting with them in that way.”
In Communities, users will also be able to see the phone numbers of the others who participate in the sub-groups with them, or when they engage with each other one-on-one. This makes the product feel more personal than something like Facebook Groups.
Another key differentiator between Communities and Facebook Groups is that the latter includes groups that are public or discoverable on the platform. WhatsApp Communities are neither. The company says it will not allow users to search for or discover Communities on its service. You have to be invited to the groups to join them.
To get started with Communities, admins will be able to link a pre-existing group chat to the new feature or create a new group from scratch. WhatsApp believes there are already a large number of group chats that will easily make the transition to the more structured Communities when the feature launches.
“We don’t have a precise number, but when you talk to people in a lot of the countries where WhatsApp is popular, it is really prevalent that people are not, at this point, just using WhatsApp to talk to their family or their friends,” says Cathcart. “They’re using it to talk to their boss and co-workers. They’re using it if they have kids in schools.”
“What we’re doing now is starting to build for organizational use cases with intention,” he says.
To grow their groups, admins can add members to Communities individually or they can share an invite link. Helpfully, for clubs and other groups where members come and go, admins have the power to remove individual members from a Community as needed. Read more at Tech Crunch.
