“WhatsApp” .. a new feature for group chats

The social networking application WhatsApp has added a new feature similar to that of the competing Telegram application, with the aim of facilitating group conversations between users. 

According to the Cnet.com website, which specializes in technology issues, the Communities feature for group chat allows increasing the number of participants in the audio conversation to 32 participants, with the addition of emojis to comment on audio messages.

The new feature targets workers in institutions such as schools or residential neighborhoods to coordinate and share information.

According to an official in WhatsApp, the “Communities” feature is to respond to groups and channels on the Telegram application.

While it is not yet clear how many community members can have in one group, it certainly won't reach the "hundreds of thousands" who can subscribe to a single chat group or channel on other apps.

At the same time, the group chat via the Communities feature will enjoy the same privacy and protection that the WhatsApp application provides to its users.

In addition to the community feature, the WhatsApp application has added a set of new features found in competing applications for a long time, such as emojis and increasing the number of participants in the voice chat to 32 people, compared to 8 people before that.

Users can also share larger files and media via the app, with up to 2 GB per file compared to the current 100 MB.