WhatsApp announces 'Communities' feature

Thanks to WhatsApp's new "Communities" feature, large communities with subgroup chats can be created within WhatsApp and announcements sent to the entire community will be easily read.

With the WhatsApp Communities feature, users gathered under groups such as school, family, work or neighborhood will now have the opportunity to gather many groups under one roof. Thanks to the "Communities" feature, users can easily be informed about the announcements sent to the community. With the new features it brings, WhatsApp aims to enable users to gather under larger formations on matters that are important to them.

The "Communities" feature also gives administrators greater control. In addition to determining the announcement messages sent to community members, administrators will also have the power to decide which groups and users to include in "Communities".

Users will be able to access this feature, create a new Community from scratch, or add existing groups to their Community via the new "Communities" tab at the top of chats on Android and at the bottom on iOS. Users who join a community will be able to easily switch between their existing groups and read announcements posted by admins to users in the Community.

USERS CAN QUIETLY LEAVE THE GROUP

Based on the need of interconnected communities for more private and safer ways to communicate among themselves, WhatsApp also brings innovations to the platform with "Communities".

With the new features, all users will have the opportunity to hide their online status and leave the group silently without notification to the entire group. In addition, in order to protect the privacy of what is spoken in the group, administrators in WhatsApp Communities will also have the authority to decide on the announcement messages sent and the groups to be included. WhatsApp, which offers features such as increasing the number of files to support files and bringing a one-touch voice call option for up to 32 people, announced that new features that will further strengthen "Groups" and "Communities" will be made available in the near future.

With the new features, it will be possible to organize in-chat polls and learn the general opinion of users in the same group or community.

In addition, aiming to bring together wider audiences, WhatsApp will allow video calls of up to 32 people and creating groups of up to 1,024 users.