WhatsApp To Launch 'Communities' (techcrunch.com) 5
Meta is throwing billions of dollars into building out the metaverse as the future of social networking but in the near term, the tech giant is looking toward the power of messaging to connect users in a more personal way. From a report: On that front, the company today introduced its plans for a significant update to its WhatsApp messaging app that will allow users to now not only connect privately with friends and family, as before, but also participate in larger discussion groups, called Communities. These groups aim to serve as a more feature-rich replacement for people's larger group chats with added support for tools like file-sharing of up to 2GB, 32-person group calls, emoji reactions, as well as admin tools and moderation controls, among other things.
The feature has been under development for some time as the next big iteration for the WhatsApp platform, meant to capitalize on the app's existing end-to-end encryption as well as users' growing desire to join private communities outside of larger social platforms, like Facebook. In particular, Communities could present a challenge to other messaging apps like Telegram -- which has recently become a prominent player in communications related to the Russia-Ukraine war -- in addition to other private messaging platforms, like iMessage or Signal, as well as apps like GroupMe, Band, Remind and others used to communicate with groups.
The feature has been under development for some time as the next big iteration for the WhatsApp platform, meant to capitalize on the app's existing end-to-end encryption as well as users' growing desire to join private communities outside of larger social platforms, like Facebook. In particular, Communities could present a challenge to other messaging apps like Telegram -- which has recently become a prominent player in communications related to the Russia-Ukraine war -- in addition to other private messaging platforms, like iMessage or Signal, as well as apps like GroupMe, Band, Remind and others used to communicate with groups.
Telegram not private (Score:4, Insightful)
Telegram seems most like a honeypot. "Everybody knows" it's encrypted, but in reality only 1:1 messages are, and that's not by default.
All those people, who have verified their phone number, feel very comfortable speaking their mind in their "secure" group chat.
Also: if you lose your phone and re-connect with the same phone number it will helpfully reload all of your previous conversations and group chats. Very convenient!
the internet is for porn (Score:3, Informative)
These "communities" will quickly become porn repositories. Telegram has terabytes of it, all sorted by your particular tastes.
Copy the competition's successful feature - as usu (Score:2)
So, staying with the basic winning strategy... copy the competition's successful features or just buy them out.
SpaceX/Elon Musk to Meta/Mark Zuckerberg: (Score:2)