Prepare for a slew of new WhatsApp features.
In a departure from its typical practise, the popular Meta-owned communication programme WhatsApp has unveiled five updates that will be coming soon ahead of time.
Communities are WhatsApp’s most important feature. Connected chats may be used by groups like clubs, housing associations or non-profits to communicate with one other. Even if your kid attends the same school, you might establish a separate group for each class and connect with parents and instructors from each one separately.
“Powerful new tools for administrators” will also be included in the feature, which is primarily an organisational change “group announcements, as well as the last say on which groups are allowed to exist inside the broader framework.
Group conversations, whether they’re part of the new system or not, are being improved by WhatsApp regardless of whether they’re separate chats or part of the new system.
Two of these proposals would raise the existing ceilings. Voice calls can now only have eight people on them, but that number will soon be expanded to 32, which may seem excessive, but it’s wonderful to have the choice.
For “easier collaboration on projects,” the maximum file size will grow from a meagre 100MB to a substantial 2GB.” It’s worth noting, though, that this seems to be for papers rather than media like video, music, and photos. In the event that this is true, it would reduce the effectiveness of the increase.
Admins will soon have the option to purge conversations of “errant or troublesome” remarks. You may now only remove your own messages, but this is a first step towards providing moderating capabilities on the site, giving greater control to people in charge of groups. The administrator is normally the person who started the group, however this may be changed in the settings.
It’s finally here: emoji responses. This is a game changer. We’ve all had to mute a group chat because of people’s overzealous answers. Like Slack, Facebook and Microsoft Teams, emoji replies may show you’ve read a message without having to shout out “thanks” or “awesome” or “lol” to everyone else in the chat room.
It’s “early days for Communities” and “developing additional features to support them will be a significant emphasis of ours for year to come” at the time of writing, but WhatsApp hasn’t provided us a timetable. That points to a launch in 2022, but how soon that will be is anyone’s estimate.