New WhatsApp features: Communities and reactions with emojis

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(CNN Spanish) --

In mid-April, Meta announced the arrival of Communities on WhatsApp, a new feature that allows users to bring together different groups in one place with the aim, according to the company, of "easily organizing groups smaller discussion groups to talk about what is specifically relevant to that group of people.

And with the arrival of Communities, more tools are also integrated, such as the possibility of reacting with emojis, the size of files that can be sent and the limit of people to make voice calls have increased.

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But first, what are WhatsApp Communities?

Think of Communities as a group made up of different groups.

For example, a school principal can create a Parent Community, and then add different groups based on grade level.

Like the messages and groups currently available, messages within Communities are "totally private" with end-to-end encryption.

Along with the creation of these Communities, WhatsApp added more interaction to its messaging service, such as the possibility of responding to messages with emojis, a function already available in other messaging applications.

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Likewise, WhatsApp will allow people to share files of up to 2GB in order to facilitate collaboration between users and it will also be possible to make voice calls with up to 32 people.

To make calls easier, they "will have a completely new design for those moments when talking live is better than chatting," WhatsApp said in a press release.

These tools will be available "over the next few weeks."

In fact, they will be before the official launch of Communities.

"We're going to start rolling this out slowly, but I expect it to be a major evolution for WhatsApp and online communication in general," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote of the Communities launch.

However, Zuckerberg indicated that this new feature will also be integrated into Messenger, Facebook and Instagram.

Other recently announced features

At the end of 2021, WhatsApp announced that users will be able to listen to their voice messages before sending them, allowing them to re-record them if they contain errors, as well as other innovations focused on voice messages.

Another feature launched last year under the premise that "not all messages need to be saved forever" allows messages to be deleted 24 hours or 90 days after being sent, as the user decides.

The seven-day option was already available, and the feature that makes photos and videos disappear after being viewed once was released in the summer.

Temporary messages can also be turned on by users by default and can be used within group chats.

WhatsApp.

Single view photos and videos.

However, keep in mind that not all temporary messages disappear as there are certain limitations.

For example, when you reply to a temporary message it could stay in the chat and the same would happen if you forward a temporary message to a chat that has temporary messages turned off.

Temporary messages can be turned on by default for all individual chats in Settings > Account > Privacy > Default Duration.

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