WhatsApp Forays Into Slack And Discord Territory As It Rolls Out Communities Globally

Meta Platforms Inc.’s META instant messaging app WhatsApp has rolled out the Communities feature globally. It's a spin on Slack workspace or Discord channel. 

What Happened: On Thursday, Meta introduced several new updates including Communities, a feature designed to house multiple related groups within a bigger organization of people, such as a neighborhood or a workplace, reported The Verge.

On its official Twitter handle, WhatsApp tweeted about the same.

Welcome to Communities 👋

Now admins can bring related groups together in one place to keep conversations organized.

Organized. Private. Connected 🤝 pic.twitter.com/u7ZSmrs7Ys

— WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) November 3, 2022

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Meta first began testing Communities in April. The feature is similar to Slack or Discord with end-to-end encryption. It allows group admins to share updates with an entire community through a single announcement channel. For instance, it enables school principals to bring together parents to share updates and set up groups about specific classes, extracurricular activities, or volunteer needs.

Apart from Communities, Meta introduced new in-chat polls, a tool for picking which movie to watch or landing on a meeting time, and 32-person WhatsApp video calling.   

Also, if users just want to create one giant group, WhatsApp has doubled the maximum group size from 512 to 1,024 participants.

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