When Communities first rolled out onto WhatsApp, the lack of any substantial organisational features felt like a missed opportunity. Meta evidently felt the same, having just updated the messenger to include features that’ll help Communities (and groups) stay on top of things — like planning events and better replies.
Better late than never, huh?
The idea is to fix a real issue on WhatsApp: how often does your group chat dabble in hypotheticals when it comes to putting together a straightforward meetup, all for it to fall apart thanks to the few who need to be inundated with reminders before they’re fully committed? Events are for those people.
Anyone can create an event, and anyone in the group can mark themselves as attending or not. So as not to lose out on those events to the folly of time (or simply forgetting), events are pinned up on the group’s information page and can be accessed at any time by any attending guests. WhatsApp will also send out reminders closer to the event’s start time to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Read More: All my WhatsApps were lost. I’m thrilled.
It’s worth mentioning that the event feature is reserved for those groups which belong to a Community at first, though WhatsApp has plans to expand it to all regular groups “over the coming months.”
Next up is ‘Announcement Groups’, a place for admins to keep up with their members easily, while also giving those plebians who didn’t make the Community first a space to reply to the admins and have their feelings heard. Sure, all those replies are automatically muted and minimised to a small window and might be extending the admin’s power trip, but it’s better than nothing, we guess.
WhatsApp isn’t through with Communities just yet. It says that it will “keep rolling out new features to Communities and groups so people have more tools to keep their lives organized on WhatsApp.”