WhatsApp beta, the Community function and many other news are coming
The news on the beta channel of WhatsApp is now arriving at an almost daily pace and although most of the time these are minor changes, really interesting functions for users often emerge. Only two days ago we talked to you about the news regarding in-app surveys and in the last few hours other important functional and structural changes are taking shape. We will talk about one of these today thanks to the most recent information that emerged from the beta released on Android and iOS in the last few hours.
The most interesting was found in the beta 2.22.19.72 on iOS but it was also identified on a recent trial version on Android and introduces the already ventilated work Community, the test of which has finally started with a small number of users. But there are changes in progress also regarding the connection to the camera. What is it specifically about?
COMMUNITY
As discovered by the super active WaBetaInfo and shown very well in the upper screen, the functionality will allow you to create Community to which we can add up to 10 groups for now, but the limit will be raised to 50 groups in the future. They will be profiled as sub-groups and will serve to bring together all the members within a single organization, where each individual member can choose which sub-group to join based on their interests.
As part of the community members will also be able to receive messages from administrators within one or more special read-only groups, and of course only those with privileges will be able to post the messages. At the moment, each participant’s phone number will always be visible to all other community members when joining a subgroup, but WhatsApp plans to offer the ability to hide it from other users with a future update.
As specified at the beginning, WhatsApp is testing the function with a very small group of beta testers, who will not be able to involve users in possession of the public version of Whatsapp. Even if we receive an invitation to join a community, we will not be able to participate if we are not among those selected by Whatsapp for the initial trial tranche, precisely because the function is limited to a few and still under development. At the moment it is difficult to establish a release date, but the initiation of the test is a good sign of the possible timing.
The news concerns in this case the beta 2.22.20.5 of Whatsapp for Android but it is easy to imagine that the same fate will also be reserved for the iOS version. As shown by the upper screen, the change is strictly connected to the Community function and Whatsapp has made several changes in the latest beta, by accidentally enabling a shortcut (in version 2.22.20.4) and then remedied with a recent modification. The initial intention was to create a shortcut for the creation of Communities to replace that of the camera, clearly visible even in the public versions.
It was then decided to eliminate the link altogether placed next to the Search button, in favor of a smaller version at the bottom left of the tabs, which apparently will have double value, depending on whether the Community function is active or not.
In fact, we expected the camera shortcut to be removed only for those users who can access it using the camera card, but it has been permanently removed for everyone. The changes were made overnight, so it is reasonable to imagine that further changes may be introduced in the future.
