WABetaInfo has gathered evidence that WhatsApp is working on a Communities feature to give group admins more power to create groups within groups.
This move stems from WhatsApp’s need to bridge the competitive gap between it and other messaging platforms like Telegram and Signal. Especially Telegram which seems to be at close marking with it. During the temporal shutdown of Facebook’s network of apps last month, which affected WhatsApp, Telegram gained over 70 million users.
The communities feature may also allow links to invite new users and then enable messaging other members. It’s unsure how exactly these chats might look right now, but WABetaInfo notes that they appear to be end-to-end encrypted.
There may also be a design change that differentiates the normal group chat from the communities. According to WABetaInfo, community icons will be squares with rounded corners, a format that WhatsApp mistakenly enabled (and then quickly disabled) in October.
However, there’s no precise date on when the Communities feature will be launched.
