Google Voice vs WhatsApp

2022. WhatsApp's new Communities tool sounds a lot like Slack


WhatsApp has added a new feature - Communities. A "Community" will be composed of people who are all part of the same organization or group — WhatsApp gives the example of a school or apartment building — and sub-groups for people to discuss specific topics. There will also be a mechanism for admins to send announcements to all the members. Communities sounds a lot like Slack, the messaging platform that's extremely popular in the digital workplace. WhatsApp is also rolling out some general changes to Groups that also have a Slack-ish ring to them. Most notably, that includes emoji reactions. Praise be! But there's also increased size for audio calls (they'll be able to accommodate 32 users), increased file sharing size to 2 GB, and the ability for admins to delete messages.


2016. WhatsApp will go free and add features for business



Whatsapp has announced it will drop its subscription fee, making the service free for everyone. And it won't start showing third-party ads to users. Instead, it will add features to better connect users with business and organizations. That could mean communicating with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent, or with an airline about a delayed flight. Whatsapp wants to charge organizations and business for establishing channels with their users through the service Whatsapp, which has been acquired by Facebook for $16 billion in Feb. 2014, currently has "nearly" 1 billion users, according to the post. Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said on several occasions he expects the service to hit that milestone, at which point it would become ripe for monetization.