WhatsApp is stepping into the footsteps of Facebook by now allowing you to create events within Communities. Instant messaging is increasingly becoming a social network…
One of WhatsApp’s main strengths remains its ability to organize group discussions. A simple and most useful operation when it comes to communicating with several people at the same time. And there are many opportunities: preparing a birthday party, a group outing, organizing an event, chatting with several family members or interacting with several colleagues to carry out a project… There is no shortage of opportunities! Subsequently, Meta introduced Communities, which allow you to create subgroups within a group. This is very practical for managing several conversations around a specific subject. For example, members of a restaurant can form their community and create a thread for the chefs, a thread for the wait staff, and one for the entire team. The same goes for a class, which can access a channel for homework assistance, one for teacher announcements, one for absences, etc. To make WhatsApp even more user-friendly and indispensable, Meta announced, in a blog postthe gradual deployment of a function allowing you to create an event within Communities.
WhatsApp event: Communities, better than Facebook groups?
“Thanks to Events, it’s now easier to organize meetings directly on WhatsApp, whether they’re virtual meetings or birthday parties”, rejoices Meta. Each member of the Community will be able to create an event to which other participants can respond. All information relating to the event will be accessible in the group information and, to be sure not to forget it, WhatsApp will send a notification to participants shortly before it takes place. The events will initially be reserved for Communities, then the function will be rolled out to all groups in the coming months.
Another new feature: a function called “Reply in ad groups” is also added in Communities, allowing administrators to “receive feedback from their members without altering the objective of these groups”. Concretely, it will be possible to react to an announcement message within a “thread”, in the same way as on other messaging services such as Slack or Discord, in order to maintain a certain consistency and clarity. A bit like on social networks ultimately. Importantly, these messages will not activate notifications, so members are not spammed in larger communities. Practical !
These additions show Meta’s desire to make its instant messaging a tool for the professional world, gradually establishing itself as a serious competitor for Teams, Zoom or even Google Meet, but also making it more and more like a social network in its own right. With the creation of events, WhatsApp has even stepped directly into the footsteps of Facebook which, although it is losing popularity, has until now remained THE platform for organizing an event. It remains to be seen if they will be as successful!