WhatsApp has announced its next big feature: Communities. Aimed at making it easier to manage related groups, the feature is tapped as a major evolution in the app.

But how will Communities on WhatsApp work? How are they different to groups and what new features will they bring?

Here’s what you should know about the planned feature…

What Are WhatsApp Communities?

whatsapp communities features
Image Credit: WhatsApp

WhatsApp Communities will act as a way to organize groups on WhatsApp—essentially acting as a larger directory for related groups.

WhatsApp’s parent company Meta announced the feature on April 14 in a WhatsApp blog post and on Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page.

In its announcement, the company explained:

Communities on WhatsApp will enable people to bring together separate groups under one umbrella with a structure that works for them. That way people can receive updates sent to the entire Community and easily organize smaller discussion groups on what matters to them.

The company will start testing the feature from April 14 and gradually roll it out over the next few months.

As an example of a community, WhatsApp used a set of groups for a school’s students' parents. The community would be based around linking parents who want to stay informed about events and developments at their children’s school. Meanwhile, specific groups may be separated into parents from specific grades, parents who want to join carpooling, or parents who need to stay involved in after-school activities.

If you are in a group within a specific community, you can see what other groups are linked to the community and choose to join them if you want.

How Are Communities Different From Groups?

There are several differences between Communities and groups. Communities will essentially be a way to organize and link groups on WhatsApp.

Groups will still remain the actual place where you communicate and send messages. Not every group will need to link to a community. A group can exist without a community, but a community serves no purpose without groups.

In a way, the new feature works similarly to Slack workspaces and channels. Communities are like a workspace, while groups are similar to individual Slack channels.

You can choose to add people by creating a WhatsApp group invite link they can use. But if you want to restrict access to the group, you should rather only let admins invite members.

Community admins will also be able to broadcast messages to all groups linked to their community.

To protect privacy, only fellow group members can see each other’s phone numbers. Community members cannot see this contact information unless they are in the same group or are a community admin.

Meanwhile, WhatsApp will also limit groups to being part of only one community.

The company will also not allow you to search for Communities on WhatsApp. This is a measure to prevent people from randomly joining groups they shouldn't be part of.

As the company explains in another WhatsApp blog post:

While other apps provide group chats without limits, WhatsApp is focusing our product development on meeting the needs of organizations and other groups where many people know one another already. Unlike social media and other messaging services, WhatsApp will not support the ability to search for or discover new Communities on our service.

Communities will also be limited in size. This means you cannot endlessly add more groups and more members to Communities in order to broadcast messages.

So while businesses can create Communities for their customers, it's not meant to be used as a mass marketing medium.

Rather, WhatsApp is aiming the feature at neighborhood groups, NGOs, work groups, and other smaller communities of people who need to stay in contact and work together.

New WhatsApp Group Chat Features

whatsapp communities chat features
Image Credit: WhatsApp

With Communities, WhatsApp will also be testing and introducing new chat features for groups. This includes more control for admins, including removing messages from chats.

Other features include reactions, similar to those available on Facebook and Messenger. WhatsApp also plans to launch group audio calls with up to 32 people and increase file sharing size limits to 2GB.

These chat features will start rolling out sooner than Communities, in preparation for the feature’s rollout.

The Next Step in WhatsApp's Expansion

Communities are the next step in WhatsApp expanding its scope as a messaging service. While the company says that it has no current intentions to focus the feature on monetization or advertising, only time will tell how it evolves.

For now, Communities seem like a way to make using WhatsApp groups easier and more convenient while expanding their use cases.