I am always saying it and I have to say it again: Telegram has more features compared to WhatsApp even though the latter has more users especially in Zimbabwe. In another game of catch up WhatsApp is now working on a Communities feature that is meant to complement groups. The feature was first noticed by the smart folks at XDA Developers and WABetaInfo.

The feature was first noticed in WhatsApp back in October but now we know more about how it will work. So for example let us say you run a series of education-related groups as a primary school teacher. You can create communities for each subject that you teach across all the groups. You can then post material and allow people to chat about a specific subject in those communities.

It’s not clear when the communities feature will go live in the stable and everyday version of WhatsApp but I for one am excited about it. The possibilities for such a feature are endless. WhatsApp is often used by small businesses in Zimbabwe and often the normal group feature comes with limitations. There is a hard limit of 257 members including the admin and the fact that you end up having several groups on the same topic and no easy way to coordinate members across groups. Communities are meant to solve that. You can checkout Telegram’s channels to get an idea of what Communities will look like.