Everyone around the world is curious about the new WhatsApp Community feature. Many individuals are contrasting WhatsApp Communities with groups and wondering why the former is necessary. We would be addressing these concerns and more.
WhatsApp Communities, for those who are unfamiliar, are a way to centrally manage communication among liked minded people. This means thousands of users can join a community with multiple subgroups, and all get the timely updates they need. The number of users, admin controls, privacy settings, and more are just a few differences between WhatsApp Communities and Groups. Let’s delve in and take a closer look.
WhatsApp groups
If you have been invited or added to a WhatsApp group, you can all participate in a singles threaded conversation. Furthermore, they can communicate through files, emojis, and documents. It has a large user base. Family, friends, social, neighbourhood watch and other types of WhatsApp groups are a few examples.
WhatsApp Communities
The community feature was recently released, although WhatsApp groups have been around for a while. The community was created to consolidate all WhatsApp groups that shared a common interest. Consider it a roof over related organisations. In order to keep the WhatsApp family and friends groups all in one place. For instance, you can create a WhatsApp community. A lecturer can start a WhatsApp community and invite students from Year One through Year Four, or more. A reliable method of spreading the word about times sensitive or urgent information.
Unique features
Some of the most important characteristics and differences between WhatsApp groups and communities are discussed below:
Hierarchy
Communities can be added to groups, but not the other way around. To organise relevant WhatsApp groups, communities are employed.
Consider it this way- a house (community) with several separate rooms (groups) where various conversations are taking place or workplace (community) with numerous divisions (teams).
Utility
WhatsApp groups are a great way to stay in touch with loved ones, friends, and groups of individuals who share similar passions or pursuits. Most of us are familiar with gym groups in our area.
WhatsApp communities are simply a collection of related or topical WhatsApp groups. In the same community, you can add your gym, your neighbourhood runners, and your diet groups. When you make an announcement or send out an alert to a certain group, only the members of that group will be notified. All the groups and their members will be notified when you send out an alert in a community. A classroom educator can notify an entire grade level about the upcoming day camp.
Video and audio calling
Video and voice calling are not yet available in WhatsApp communities. Additionally, it doesn’t make sense to have video or audio calling buttons in the announcement groups because they can contain up to 5,000 people from the smaller discussion groups that are welcomed to the community.
You’ll have to rely on these smaller groups to have meetings and discussions amongst yourselves. To accommodate this, WhatsApp has raised the maximum number of people that can join a call from 16 to 32.
Number of users in groups, communities and announcement groups
As of the time of writing this, WhatsApp’s group size limit is 1,024 people.
A single community, however, can contain up to 21 groups. The sum of a community’s people equals 21,504. That’s a lot, but compared to Telegram’s 200 million users, it pales in comparison to WhatsApp.
The announcement groups are another option that may be utilised to inform people about upcoming activities. Surprisingly, it has a maximum capacity of just 5,000 people. The fate of other community members in other groups and the possibility of having multiple announcement groups are also unknown at this time.
Admin powers
Compared to group admins, the community admin has a few more privileges. For starters, the announcement group can only be used by the community administrator. There is no way for group admins to post updates.
Community administrators can add or delete groups from a community and create new ones. Once more, the authority of the community administrator is greater than the authority of the group administrator. This establishes a distinct level of authority. They also can create new groups, remove existing members, and invite new people to join. In actuality, the community’s creator and administrator can delete members from all of the community’s groups at once.
The community administrator has the power to promote certain members to the position of administrator to facilitate easier administration of the group. Only in groups where they are admins can group admins promote members to that role. Any group that is a part of the administrator’s community may be selected.
Easier to kick out users
Although it can be exploited maliciously, this function is crucial for businesses, classrooms, and other communities. During our testing, we discovered that you may remove a member from all of the groups they are a part of inside a WhatsApp community at once.
Administrators of the community can benefit from this function by easily updating the member list if there is a change in occupancy. The community can have new members added, and the existing ones can be removed (together with all the groups). Moreover, you may utilise this function to remove annoying members from all of your groups with just one tap.
Can’t transfer ownership
If you’ve used WhatsApp groups for a while and are an admin in a couple of them, you know that if you leave a group as admin, the ownership and admin role are transferred to another user. However, a community is not like that at all. The community creator cannot leave or be removed as an admin in the new WhatsApp community feature.
A WhatsApp group’s admin can delegate administrative duties to another member and then exit the group entirely. The community’s founder, however, is also its administrator. He or she is permanently ensconced in this role and cannot be replaced. Additionally, he or she can appoint members of the group as admins to aid in the management of the community, but those same individuals can dismiss him or her as well. You can’t hand off the reins here.
Messaging Restrictions
In most cases, a message can be transmitted to up to five different groups at once, but in communities, only one group at a time can receive it. WhatsApp says it is taking this step to combat spam and fake news.
In addition, as was already mentioned, the announcement group is now set to a maximum of 5,000 members, and only admins can send messages to all and any members using this method. In the following weeks and months, though, WhatsApp promises to make “incremental improvements to group sizes”.
In addition to sending and deleting their own messages, community moderators can do the same for the messages of other members. Useful if you suspect that someone has sent you a message filled with bigotry, abuse, or malice.
Privacy and security features
All group members’ names, phone numbers, and profile pictures are visible to you if you are the group’s administrator or even a member. Communities, however, force members of disparate groups to interact with one another in ways that aren’t ideal.
Fortunately, unlike groups, community members do not have access to each other’s contact information or other personal information. While the community admin can still see all members’ names and phone numbers, the group admin can only see the profile details of the members of their own group.
For both groups and communities, encryption is still the de facto standard. But WhatsApp warns that users will be permanently banned if they are found to be sending or sharing offensive or inappropriate material. That is great, and it is definitely a step in the right direction toward safer communities, but it does bring up some interesting questions about encryption and how the administration deals with it.
Users of WhatsApp groups can and should be on the lookout for any members who may be spreading false information or inappropriate content, and can quickly report or block them.
Design and UI changes
The visual distinction between WhatsApp groups and communities may seem insignificant to some, yet it can be quite useful. To begin, each of your WhatsApp communities has its own tab. Next to the “chats” tab in the top navigation bar on Android and in the bottom bar on iPhone is a new “community” icon.
The rapid identification of groups and communities has become simpler thanks to WhatsApp. community feature a square with rounded corners, whereas Groups have circular icons.
If you look up, you will see that the icon representing the announcing team has a blue background and a horn icon. Also, groups that are part of a community have a unique icon on their profile that looks like stacked circles. Undeniably arresting to the eye.
In conclusion
Schools, universities, non-governmental organisations, and businesses of all sizes can all benefit from the WhatsApp community. The WhatsApp community will infiltrate our daily lives, even though businesses and professionals would prefer a more feature-rich platform like Slack or Teams. Communities are comparable to groups in that they both serve to categorise and arrange individuals under a single administrative framework.
If you have been debating whether to stay with your current groups or create a new community in WhatsApp, this article would help clear up any confusion you may have had.
