WhatsApp Launches Communities

WhatsApp has officially launched Communities, the new feature offering larger, more structured discussion groups that first entered into testing earlier this year.

Communities bring a number of new features to the messanger including admin controls, support for sub-groups and announcement groups, 32-person voice and video calls, larger-file sharing, emoji reactions and polls, with many fefatures having been previously introduced in Telegram.

Communities support groups of up to 1,024 users and offer end-to-end encryption. The phone numbers, on which accounts in WhatsApp are based, will be hidden from the wider Community and only made visible to admins and others in the sub-groups.

We’ve been working with over 50 organizations in 15 countries to build Communities to meet their needs. We’re excited that the feedback we’ve heard so far is these new tools are helping groups like these better organize and achieve their goals,

WhatsApp has announced in its blogpost.

The company promised to "keep adding features over the coming months."