Take the example of a school. There are hundreds of students but no single student needs to speak to everyone. There can be sub-groups. For example, a quizzing group, a chess club group and so on. The principal can address the entire school but students need to interact within sub-groups. The idea is called Communities and it’s coming to WhatsApp. It will probably be one of the most interesting moves the communication platform has made in years.
Coming in the form of a tab, the feature will first roll out to a small select number of groups. The idea is to organise discussions within a big group. The feature will help WhatsApp to take on rival apps like Telegram or Signal, which have become prominent messaging services that allow communication within large groups.
In Communities users will be able to see the phone numbers of only those who participate in a sub-group with them or when they engage in one-on-one chats. Plus, it will not be possible to search or discover Communities; you have to be invited.
Admins of the main group can add members to sub-groups or share an invite link. This can be particularly helpful in the case of clubs where members come and go while admins have the power to remove individual members from a Community. Admins may have the power to share announcement to all Community members on the main group but members can only chat in the smaller groups.
To help the communication process, admins will be able to share files up to 2 GB to help groups collaborate and share information while communities can host voice calls with up to 32 people only. Also coming are emoji reactions so people can quickly share their opinion without flooding chats with new messages.