WhatsApp will be turned into a social network

If we were to locate trends in social networks in recent years, we could say that there are at least two to take into consideration: on the one hand, the growth of platforms linked to the use of content, such as TikTok, which leave aside the social nature to focus on entertainment; on the other hand, all those apps that allow people to develop relationships, such as social networks of the origins, but to do so within closed and selected spaces, come Discord (what is that?) o Telegram.

If there is an application that we all use and that seemed to have missed this last train, it is WhatsApp: the platform owned by Meta remains the first choice for almost all Italians (here some data) when you want to communicate with friends, family or colleagues, but lack a slightly wider dimension, which may perhaps allow you to gather large groups (the limit is 256 members) of people starting from common interests.

What is Community
It is no coincidence, therefore, that Meta has announced the birth of Community, a function that seems to have been designed precisely to give a more social dimension to a platform that is still basically closed. WhatsApp Community will allow people to aggregate separate groups into one space. Here, users will be able to receive updates and easily organize smaller, topic-specific discussion spaces: “We built WhatsApp Community – explained the CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg – to make it easier to organize all group chats and to find information. You can bring together different groups in a single community: in addition to individual groups for the different classes, you could have a general community for the parents of a school with a single space for circulars and tools for administrators “.

To understand, let’s keep the example of Zuckerberg and let’s imagine we are the principal of a school: through the creation of a Community we will have the possibility to gather all the different groups of parents under the same space, to have a minimum of control and also to write notices on the bulletin board. Those who will be included in the Community will be able to look at the available groups and choose which one to join, upon request that must be accepted by the administrator. All time following the example of the schoolthe parent of a pupil who has just entered the institute, once he has accessed the Community, can decide to join the class group, the afternoon sports group or the school bus group.

In short, a little Telegramwith the Channels function and the one-to-many communication that this allows, and a little Discordfrom which WhatsApp seems to borrow the organization which, under a broader umbrella, allows people to choose which groups to intervene in.

However, it is a function that is built on the basis of the specificities of WhatsApp, which remains an instant messaging platform that must take into account the privacy of users. Firstly, access to the Communities will not be open to everyone: to enter, you will need to be invited by the administrator, who will be asked to select the groups to be introduced or to create new ones. In other words, there will be no Community search function.

At the same time, the telephone number of the subscribers will not be visible to all members of the Community, but only to those with whom you share individual groups, as is already the case today. Again: only administrators will be able send messages, called Alertsto community members in the relevant wall and there will be a limit to the forwarding of messages, which can be sent to only one group at a time, instead of the 5 currently allowed.