A few months back WhatsApp announced that they were launching a new major feature that could make the platform a powerful one for organisations and communities It is also fittingly called Communities. WhatsApp made the announcement back in April 2022 and teased it as a “coming soon” feature. Months later, Communities might finally be a reality. As with any other major features platform providers want to release, they have to go through their testing phase first, WhatsApp included.
While it may seem odd, WhatsApp is one of the most popular, if not the most popular, communication platform in Malaysia. While other countries still rely on the regular messaging app, WhatsApp is a mainstay in Malaysia and is the preferred communication tool of the nation. It is not just personal communication that relies on WhatsApp in Malaysia, companies and organisations rely on WhatsApp Groups to get messages across, essential team communications, and even announcements going.
The reliance and usage patterns for the platform in Malaysia makes it the perfect test bench and sample pool for WhatsApp communities.
As per the announcement back in April, Communities will be a powerful tool for administrators looking to run multiple groups in their organisations. It allows an admin to include and exclude groups in a single Community group. At that, it also allows admins to start smaller and more controlled conversation groups within the community itself with select members. Communities allows admins to send a community wide announcement if the need arises. At the same time, only the admin has the power to invite members into the community and its groups, also to remove members when they deem necessary.
There are other features that are being added as well with WhatsApp Communities. To be fair, these are improvements done for WhatsApp Groups. Some of the improvements have been introduced before Communities in preparation for the arrival of the new feature too. Reaction, for example, was introduced so users can quickly react to messages via emoji without flooding group chats with new messages and drown the messages out. Group admins can also remove messages from chats for everyone in the group, if they deem it to be problematic. File sharing limit has been pushed to 2GB for more versatile collaboration efforts. Voice calls can now include up to 32 users while you can now mute other people in the call just to ensure that discussions and presentations can go on without distractions. WhatsApp Groups has also increased its member limit from 256 members to up to 512 members. If you wish to leave groups, you can now do it silently, only notifying group admins.
Currently, WhastApp’s Communities is being tested by Gabungan Anak-Anak Palsi Serebum (GAPS) community and Entrepreneurs and Startups in Malaysia communities. It is rolling out to select users in Malaysia currently. It will eventually be available for all WhatsApp users in Malaysia. For the latest updates on WhatsApp and its features you can visit their blog.