Earlier this year we reported on a big update coming to WhatsApp groups that was doubling the potential size of WhatsApp groups from 256 participants to 512. The update was just the first in a long line of WhatsApp group-related updates to follow that are designed to make the app much more capable of handling large online communities. This move has received an even larger boost as it looks like WhatsApp groups are going to double in size again from 512 participants to 1,024. Let’s explore the move further.
Members of the WhatsApp beta community have spotted in the latest beta version for iOS that users who have been looking to create groups have the option to add up to 1,024 participants. The news has been confirmed, however, as available on both Android and iOS versions of the app.
WhatsApp has been heavily updating its group chat functionality over the last few months, giving admins more powers over the group, enabling group admission settings, and even creating a new WhatsApp Communities feature, which allows users to join communities that can have up to 10 WhatsApp groups within them.
The updates go a long way toward offering WhatsApp the same features offered by Telegram, which has a thriving business offering organisations an effective way to manage their online communities.
As to whether the augmented feature set will see more of these types of online communities move to WhatsApp remains to be seen as there are still worries about just how private WhatsApp is, despite its famous end-to-end encryption on its messages. Many of the communities you find on Telegram are there specifically for the added privacy it offers over WhatsApp so it is likely many of them will simply stay there. What this move will likely do, however, is offer much more casual internet users an easier and more accessible way to build out bigger communities of users around more wholesome activities. If you’ve ever been in a neighborhood WhatsApp group, you will have some sort of idea about the types of things we are talking about.
In other WhatsApp news, a new WhatsApp Premium mode has been spotted in the wild.
Image via: WABeaInfo
