Mark Zuckerberg announces new updates for groups on WhatsApp

Today, Mark Zuckerberg announced a bundle of new updates for groups, giving admins more control over who can join a group, and making it easier to discover what groups you have in common with someone.

Mark Zuckerberg announced this news on his Instagram Broadcast Channel, see a screenshot below. If you visit his Broadcast group, you’ll also see the update.

These changes follow some updates made over the last few months, including making groups larger, and giving admins the ability to delete messages sent in the groups they manage. Groups continue to be an essential part of WhatsApp, and we’re excited to give people even more tools to get the most out of groups.

Last year, we rolled out Communities to help people get the most out of their groups on WhatsApp. Since launching, we’ve wanted to build even more tools for admins and users alike. Today we’re excited to roll out a few new changes we’ve made to make groups more manageable for admins and easier to navigate for everyone.

New controls for admins

As more people join communities, we want to give group admins more control over their group privacy, so we’ve built a simple tool that gives admins the ability to decide who is able to join a group. When an admin chooses to share their group’s invite link, or make their group joinable in a community, they now have more control over who can join. Groups are where people have some of their most intimate conversations and it’s important that admins are able to easily decide who can and cannot come in.

Easily see groups in common 

With the growth of Communities and their larger groups, we want to make it easy to know which groups you have in common with someone. Whether you’re trying to remember the name of a group you know you share with someone or you want to see the groups you’re both in, you can now easily search a contact’s name to see your groups in common.

These features will start rolling out globally over the coming weeks, as we continue to build new tools to make groups the best experience for admins and members alike.