Meta has announced more features coming to WhatsApp’s Community tab. According to a press release, the app is bringing new controls for admins while giving people more tools to engage in groups.
New Control for Admins: WhatsApp has developed a simple tool to give admins the ability to decide who is able to join a group. When an admin chooses to share their group’s invite link or make their group joinable in a community, they now have more control over who can join.
WhatsApp is making this change because it believes “groups are where people have some of their most intimate conversations, and it’s important that admins are able to decide who can and cannot come in easily.”
Easily See Groups in Common: With more Communities created, WhatsApp wants to make it easy for people to understand which groups they have in common with someone else. Whether they’re trying to remember the name of a group they share with someone or see the groups both people have in common, users can now easily search for a contact’s name to see the mutual groups.
In addition to these features, WhatsApp is also making improvements to groups. As reported by BGR earlier this month, the app wants to create an expiring groups feature. Imagine you are preparing for a birthday party. After the party happens, the group doesn’t need to be available anymore. While some people will naturally leave the group, many others will just let it dust in the corner of WhatsApp.
When this function is available to all users, a group admin can set how long this group can exist: a day, a week, a month, or custom. After this period, the participant will be prompted to clean up the group.
New controls for admins and easily see groups in common are rolling out globally in the coming weeks. We still don’t know when expiring groups will be made available.
