WhatsApp Communities to Get New Events Feature, Replies to Announcement Groups

WhatsApp is introducing a couple of new features for communities that will allow members to engage in newer ways. Meta, the parent company of the instant messaging platform, announced on Wednesday that it is adding a new events feature and will enable replies to ad groups to make communities more interactive. Events will allow members of a group to create any event and other participants will be able to add whether they are going or not. Notably, WhatsApp is also reported to be working on a recently online feature that will list users who have recently logged into the app.

Announcing the features in a news release, Meta said: “To help bring communities even closer together, we're adding a new way for people to host events on WhatsApp, and we're introducing curated replies to ad groups so members can respond to important updates from administrators.” According to the company, events can now be created by any group member whose group is part of a community. The option to create an event can be found by tapping the paperclip icon in the text field which also opens options for surveys and payments.

These events can be for anything, including a virtual get together or a birthday party. Once an event is created, other members can respond to it. They can open the event and confirm whether they will attend or not. Everyone can see who will attend the event and who won't.

The acts can also be consulted on the group's information page. Members who will be attending will receive a notification when the event is near to remind them. Events are currently exclusive to Community Groups, but WhatsApp has said it will roll out the feature to all Groups in the coming months.

Another feature being introduced is responses to ad groups. Each WhatsApp community has a separate ad group that is accessible to all members, even if they only join one of the groups, but only admins can post there. It is usually used to post important announcements that are relevant to all members. WhatsApp now allows all members to reply to these messages.

This feature is designed to allow admins to receive feedback from the community in one place. These responses are grouped and minimized to avoid clutter, and opening them opens a lower slide showing all responses. Reply notifications are muted for everyone.