WhatsApp Finally Rolls Out Communities, 32 Person Video Calls

WhatsApp may not be the "in thing" in the U.S., but it has become the de-facto messaging standard for much of the world. According to MessengerPeople, it is the most popular messaging app on the planet. While WhatsApp began its journey as an independent startup, Facebook (now Meta) identified the platform's potential and acquired it in 2014 for a staggering $19 billion.

While WhatsApp remains the messaging app of choice for most people outside of the U.S., it was not always known for being a feature-rich app. Many of the now-common features on WhatsApp were inspired by competing products, including Telegram and Signal. However, over the past few months, Meta has been on a feature-addition spree for WhatsApp. Among the new features added during the last wave of additions include the ability to send disappearing messages, support for larger file sizes, and message reaction emojis.

In early 2022, WhatsApp announced plans to launch a new feature called WhatsApp Communities. Nearly seven months later, on November 3, 2022, Facebook confirmed that it had begun rolling out this much-awaited "Communities" feature for users across the globe. Besides "Communities,” the latest edition of WhatsApp gets many new features ranging from enhanced video calling to increased participant limits for groups.

The Communities feature for WhatsApp has been in the works for a long time and is a significant addition to the platform. Unlike WhatsApp Groups, which are bucketed alongside one-on-one chats within the WhatsApp UI, Communities gets a dedicated tab for itself. From the blog post announcing the change, it is evident that the Communities feature will let group admins better organize their group chats. With Communities, admins will be able to collate multiple groups under a single community. They will get the ability to relay important messages to the community as a whole without having to do the same for individual groups. For example, Admins can create a WhatsApp community for everyone that lives within a gated (housing) community. Within this community, however, there could be multiple groups consisting of people with specific interests.

In addition to WhatsApp Communities, WhatsApp users will now be able to add as many as 32 participants in a single video call session. Another interesting addition is the newfound ability to create in-chat polls. WhatsApp also confirmed that the app now supports the transfer of even larger file sizes (up to 2 GB).

WhatsApp claims it worked with more than 50 organizations spread across 15 countries to create and test the functionality of WhatsApp Communities. The company intends to add even more features to the app in the coming months. If you have yet to see the Communities feature on WhatsApp, ensure that you are on the latest version of the app and wait for WhatsApp to gradually roll out the feature for you.