So forgive me for not being overwhelmingly excited by this new update to WhatsApp’s beta channel that enables groups up to 256 members.
WhatsApp is a very popular chatting service that just recently announced that it has one billion active monthly users, a figure reserved for only the top of all services.
The free WhatsApp APK for Android has received several updates over the time that have made the app more modern and speedier. The silent update has gone viral practically among all the whatsapp users without the facebook owners making any formal announcement in this regard. The extension of group chat limits will especially benefit brands and marketers who need to reach out to a large number of people all at once.
As you can see in the image above, you can now add upto 256 people in the group. What good would 250 people in a single WhatsApp would do? WhatsApp also announced in January that it would start testing tools to let users communicate with businesses and organisations (speaking to an airline when your flight is delayed, for example).
So increasing the number of group members could be a first step just to test out the waters as to how operations would scale. Moreover, there are mods or hacks available for rooted Android devices that will give admins a group limit of up to 1000 members. We don’t have any information as to when WhatsApp will implement this feature in Windows Mobile. It won’t be easy to best Slack, but it’s clear that WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are here to stay – so why wouldn’t they try?