The communications platform WhatsApp announced this Thursday the introduction of new features on its platform, including reactions with emojis, as happens on Facebook.
WhatsApp will also gain a new feature called Communities and the ability for an admin to remove messages. In addition, it will increase file sharing of up to 2GB, and gain voice calls to up to 32 people simultaneously.
New feature: Communities
WhatsApp today announced its vision for a new feature being added to the platform: 'communities'. Since the launch of WhatsApp in 2009, the company has been focused on having the best and closest thing to a face-to-face conversation, whether talking to a single person, a group of friends or family.
WhatsApp also knows that people use the platform to communicate and coordinate within a community. 'Communities' in WhatsApp will allow people to create separate groups within the same group.
New powers for Administrators
Admins are responsible for creating and managing WhatsApp Communities. They can choose which groups are part of their Community by forming new groups or by linking existing groups.
Community admins will also be able to unlink groups from the Community and remove individual community members altogether. Additionally, group admins will be able to delete inappropriate or abusive conversations or media for all members of a group. We will provide administrators with resources on how best to use these new features.
Reactions with emojis
Emoji reactions have arrived on WhatsApp so users can share their opinion without flooding conversations with new messages.
Deletion by administrator
Group admins will have the ability to remove erroneous or problematic messages from the conversations of all users in the group.
File sharing up to 2GB
From now on the file sharing limit is up to 2 GB to facilitate collaboration on projects between users.
Voice calls with more users
With just one touch, it will be possible to call up to 32 people. The design has been refreshed for those times when talking face-to-face is better than texting.
While other apps are creating conversations for hundreds of thousands of people, WhatsApp chooses to focus on supporting the groups that are part of our daily lives. The platform is still in the early stages of 'Communities', and next steps include creating new features to support 'Communities', the company reveals.
These features will be available in the coming weeks.