WhatsApp, the instant messaging app owned by Meta and used by more than 2 billion people around the world, yesterday announced a big new update. It will now let people bring multiple WhatsApp groups under a single umbrella group called a “Community.” WhatsApp groups are lifelines for millions of people around the world, allowing them to talk to each other and congregate around shared interests.
Letting people combine multiple groups into a single Community makes WhatsApp function more like Slack or Discord. A workplace, for instance, can have its own Community containing multiple groups for employees. A school can have its own Community with multiple groups for parents.
Each WhatsApp Community can have up to 50 groups in it. WhatsApp doesn’t let the owner of a Community blast a message across all 50 groups at the same time. Instead, admins can drop messages in an “Announcement” group where they will be visible to members of individual groups in the Community.
