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Meta (FB) to Add New Feature Called Communities to WhatsApp

Zacks Equity Research
·3-min read

Meta Platforms FB recently announced tits intention to add a new feature to WhatsApp called Communities.

Communities like schools, local clubs, businesses and non-profit organizations use WhatsApp to form groups to share information and communicate. Meta-owned WhatsApp has been receiving a lot of feedback to make it easier to manage such groups.

In order to address these demands, Meta has come up with the Communities feature, which will enable users to bring separate groups under one umbrella. With the help of Communities, users can receive notifications sent to entire Communities and organize smaller groups within these Communities.

This will help organizations like schools to bring different groups formed by parents and authorities under one umbrella, and share updates effortlessly without the risk of missing to inform anyone.

Certain other updates, like reactions, admin delete, file sharing, and voice calls with more number of people, will be added to WhatsApp to improve the chatting experience in groups. These will allow users to send emoji reactions to particular messages, share files as large as 2GB and increase voice call capacity to 32 people.

Meta Platforms, Inc. Price and Consensus

Meta Platforms, Inc. Price and Consensus
Meta Platforms, Inc. Price and Consensus

Meta Platforms, Inc. price-consensus-chart | Meta Platforms, Inc. Quote

New WhatsApp Features Amid Strong Competition

Meta Platforms is facing stiff competition in its chatting platform from other apps like Snap SNAP, Discord and Skype.

Snap’s flagship product, Snapchat, is the most preferred social media platform among millennials and Gen-Z.

The real value of the company is not in its social media profile, but in the AR features that are making chatting and commuting on Snapchat a whole new experience, thus attracting users and content creators to its platform.

Discord and Skype are other notable chatting and networking apps used by different business organizations and creators’ communities.

In order to maintain its market share, WhatsApp has announced its plan of rolling out the new features to specifically target communities like educational institutions, NGOs and smaller businesses.

Meta Platforms is expected to evolve WhatsApp into a complete communicating and networking platform, by facilitating it with not only new chatting features, but also payment services. WhatsApp has already added the WhatsApp Payments services in the app, via which people can send and receive money.

This feature is expected to be heavily upgraded to also support NFT payment services and help creators monetize their services.

However, in the NFT market, Meta is facing competition from another social media and networking giant — Twitter TWTR.

Twitter has launched a tool that allows users to showcase NFTs as their profile pictures. The new tool will connects users’ Twitter accounts with their crypto wallets holding NFTs. Twitter is exploring the crypto universe and supporting NFT trading to attract artists who can use the platform to connect their crypto wallets and take payments directly through Twitter.

Zacks Rank and Another Stock To Consider

Meta, which currently has a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell), witnessed its shares slump 37.5% in the year-to-date period compared with the Zacks Internet – Software industry's and the Zacks Computer and Technology sector's declines of 34.2% and 18.2%, respectively.

Arista Networks ANET is another stock you can consider to increase your portfolio returns in the broader Computer and Technology sector. ANET sports a Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Arista Networks shares have slumped 11.9% in the year-to-date period, compared with the Zacks Communication - Components industry’s decline of 11.7%.


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Meta Platforms, Inc. (FB) : Free Stock Analysis Report

Twitter, Inc. (TWTR) : Free Stock Analysis Report

Arista Networks, Inc. (ANET) : Free Stock Analysis Report

Snap Inc. (SNAP) : Free Stock Analysis Report

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