Meta is\u00a0throwing billions of dollars\u00a0into building out the metaverse as the future of social networking, but in the near term, the tech giant is looking toward the power of messaging to connect users in a more personal way. On that front, the company today\u00a0introduced\u00a0its plans for a significant update to its WhatsApp messaging app that will allow users to now not only connect privately with friends and family, as before, but also participate in larger discussion groups, called Communities. These groups aim to serve as a more feature-rich replacement for people\u2019s larger group chats with added support for tools like file sharing, 32-person group calls and emoji reactions, as well as admin tools and moderation controls, among other things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The feature has been\u00a0under\u00a0development\u00a0for some time as the next big iteration for the WhatsApp platform, meant to capitalize on the app\u2019s existing end-to-end encryption as well as users\u2019 growing desire to join private communities outside of larger social platforms, like Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In particular, Communities could present a challenge to other messaging apps like Telegram \u2014 which has recently become a prominent player in communications related to the Russia-Ukraine war \u2014 in addition to other private messaging platforms, like iMessage or Signal, as well as apps like GroupMe, Band, Remind and others used to communicate with groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been clear for a while that the way we communicate online is changing,\u201d wrote Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, announcing the news in a post on his public Facebook\u00a0profile. \u201cMost of us use social networks and feeds to discover interesting content and stay updated. But for a deeper level of interaction, messaging has become the center of our digital lives. It\u2019s more intimate and private, and with encryption it\u2019s more secure too,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The feature may initially lead to some comparisons with Facebook Groups, a more private networking tool on Facebook that now reaches 1.8 billion users on a monthly basis, per Facebook\u2019s most recent public data. Similar to Groups, WhatsApp Communities would allow organizations, clubs or schools to create networks for their members to interact and share news and updates. And\u00a0like Facebook Groups recently added,\u00a0Communities also support the ability to host sub-groups. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Source: Techcrunch<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Meta is\u00a0throwing billions of dollars\u00a0into building out the metaverse as the future of social networking, but in the near term, the tech giant is looking toward the power of messaging to connect users in a more personal way. On that front, the company today\u00a0introduced\u00a0its plans for a significant update to its WhatsApp messaging app that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45136,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-news","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45135"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45137,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45135\/revisions\/45137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}