WhatsApp is reportedly working on an expansion to its groups feature. The new feature, Communities, is expected to allow admins of the communities to create multiple groups, with each group being related.

The feature was first caught by XDA Developers and by the noted compiler of WhatsApp future features, WABetaInfo.

Community is still going to be an instant messaging feature and not a social media feature. It is most likely to resemble other messaging services like Discord, and others, where users can collate multiple ‘channels’ in a single ‘server’. Users will be able to join either by using the joining link to the community or after being invited by the admins of the community.

Community may allow admins more tools to have finer control over groups but details have not emerged yet. The feature is still under development for Android and iOS versions of WhatsApp. The Community icons have a different layout. Instead of the familiar circular crop, the community icons are square in shape with rounded edges. It is assumed that the layout change is to ensure that users can distinguish between normal groups and communities.

While WhatsApp is the largest instant messaging service on the planet, the competition has steadily been catching up. Apps like Telegram, Signal and others are increasing their user base as WhatsApp still lacks many features that many other of its contemporaries possess, and the recent blackout of WhatsApp, along with Facebook and Instagram, also led to a mass exodus to other platforms.

WhatsApp, however, has been steadily working to catch up to its competition in terms of features it offers. The company has been embroiled in controversy after controversy since the start of the year when it unveiled its new privacy policy.

(Edited by : Anshul)

First Published:Nov 9, 2021 3:45 PM IST