Summary

• WhatsApp has released the Channels feature, allowing brands, celebrities, and organizations to share updates with a wide audience.
• Channels started in Colombia and Singapore, but are now available in 150 countries, with features like emoji reactions and message forwarding support.
• WhatsApp separates channels from chats, filters them by country, and promises to release more features in the future, including the ability for all users to create their own channels.

WhatsApp is one of the hottest messaging apps around, but our biggest gripe has been the lack of a few features which distances it from apps like Telegram and Discord, despite the popularity among users. The last year has been full of updates, though, and WhatsApp is gaining ground. Meta just announced the worldwide release of the Channels feature, finally making the platform suited for broadcasting conveniently.

Not to be confused with Communities which serve as an umbrella for multiple topical group chats sharing a common thread, Channels are a one-to-many messaging feature. It’s designed for brands, celebrities, organizations, artists, leaders, and even your favorite sports teams, so they can share granular updates with a wide audience. Although Channel creation isn’t available for everyone, WhatsApp now allows users in 150 countries to follow channels of their interest.

Channels started out small, limited to just Colombia and Singapore back in June this year. In the next month, WhatsApp expanded channels to nine countries in total. Now, it is available widely, with features like emoji reactions that allow followers to engage with the messages admins share, called updates. You can tap and hold a message to pick an emoji reaction, just like you would react to a message in a regular WhatsApp chat.

You can even forward messages from channels to group chats and conversations with your contacts. The recipients will see the content, and a link to check out the channel themselves. This feature aids the discoverability of channels, and should help the feature gain popularity quickly. WhatsApp also makes it easy to separate channels — the ones you follow show up in a separate section, away from your chats. You also get plenty of options to filter the feed too, so you see the newest channels at the top, the ones with the most followers. By default, WhatsApp filters channels by country, so the ones from your locale show up first. If you ever need to go back to a message, finding it should be easier with this feature.

Hopefully, WhatsApp will inform you when channels are available for you, because the rollout could be gradual. In any case, the app takes adequate measures to protect the personal details of every channel’s admins and followers. WhatsApp promises it will add more related features in the coming months, such as support for editing updates (admin-only). Soon, you may create your own channel too.

Thanks: Moshe