WhatsApp unveils feature allowing over 1,000 users in a group chat

Facebook-owned company, WhatsApp has unveiled new features including in-chat polls, video calls that support up to 32 people, and groups that support 1,024 users.

WhatsApp said with the new features, admins can add up related groups under one group called “community” and easily switch between chats.

It wrote in a blog post, “Community” will offer larger discussion groups and make the groups more structured and organised.

“Communities like neighborhoods, parents at a school, and workplaces can now connect multiple groups together under one umbrella to organize group conversations on WhatsApp.

“To get started, tap on the new communities tab at the top of your chats on Android and at the bottom on iOS. From there you can start a new Community from scratch or add existing groups.

“Once you’re in a community, you can easily switch between available groups to get the information you need, when you need it, and admins can send important updates to everyone in the Community.”

The Chief Executive Officer of Facebook, Mack Zuckerberg also spoke about the new features in an Instagram post.

He said the new features — which are “a major evolution” for the app — will allow sharing of files up to 2Gb, polls, and 32-person calls.

Before now, the 32-person calling feature was limited to voice calls only. But now, you can connect with 32 people simultaneously via video call.

With the feature, WhatsApp aims to bring its take to the likes of Google Meet and Zoom.

“This is a major evolution for Whatsapp and it’s something that I have really been focused on for the last years,” he said.

He said, “So with community, admins will now have the tools to organise conversations under one umbrella. We have also built a bunch of new features to improve the group chat experience like reactions, larger file sharing, polls, 32-person calls, shareable call links.”

The other feature called “online presence” will allow users to choose who can see them when they are online.