KUALA LUMPUR (Dec 22): WhatsApp head Will Cathcart has declared 2022 as the biggest year of innovation at the company.
In a tweet on Thursday (Dec 22), he said: “2022 was our biggest year yet. Our team was so excited to build Communities, Reactions, Polls, Avatars, 32-person video calling, and so much more. Thank you everyone who gave us feedback on how to make WhatsApp even better. There’s a lot more coming in 2023!”
This year, WhatsApp added over 20 new features — including Communities, improvements to groups, better calling and voice notes. It also added more layers of privacy, on top of industry-leading default end-to-end encryption, encrypted backups, and disappearing messages — making the most popular private messaging app even more private.
Among the new features added in 2022:
- Added layers of privacy
- Introducing Communities
- New group features
- Better voice and video calling
- Better voice messages
- Expressing yourself better
- Better utility
Communities made it easy for schools, local clubs and workplaces to manage their busy conversations by bringing multiple groups under one umbrella.
Alongside Communities, WhatsApp introduced new group messaging features, including the ability to create in-chat polls and the option to add up to 1,024 members, up from 256.
It also introduced admin delete, giving admins the ability to delete problematic messages.