Meta Platforms is globally releasing a major update for WhatsApp called Communities, which doubles the number of group chat members to 1,024, and adds video (and voice) for up to 32. Designed for schools, clubs, churches, the workplace and other organizations, Communities features include support for sub-groups, admin controls and in-chat polls. “We’re aiming to raise the bar for how organizations communicate with a level of privacy and security not found anywhere else,” the company said of the upgrade, stressing end-to-end encryption. In fact, Communities are not publicly discoverable, requiring an invitation.

“Think something like Slack or Discord, but with a WhatsApp spin,” writes The Verge, pointing out that “in-chat polls could be useful for landing on a meeting time or picking what movie to watch.” Administrators can now share updates with an entire community through a group’s announcements channel.

While TechCrunch says Communities shares several aspects of Facebook Groups, another Meta service, there are key differences. Namely, “WhatsApp Communities are meant to be used by members who may already be connected in the real world,” while Facebook Groups are designed to bring disparate individuals together through common interests.

Also, “unlike on Facebook, WhatsApp is phone number-based, meaning people joining these discussion groups already have some familiarity with one another, as they may have exchanged phone numbers or at least have shared their number with a group admin,” TechCrunch explains.

Phone numbers will, however, “be hidden from the wider Community and only made visible to admins and others in the same sub-groups,” a feature meant to balance privacy with access needs, according to TechCrunch, which gives the example “you may not personally know every parent on your kid’s sports team, but you’re likely comfortable interacting with them in a private group setting that may exist as a sub-group of the entire school’s Community.”

The formal launch of Communities is seen as a shot across the bow to other apps competing for large, yet private, group communications. These include Telegram, Signal and iMessage, as well as lesser known apps like GroupMe, Band, TalkingPoints and Remind.

Whatsapp has been testing Communities since spring, and some features — emoji reactions, message deletion for admins and the sharing of files of up to 2GB — were adopted during the trial run. The company says it will take a few months to get every region updated.

“It’s amazing that this social media app is free and yet it continues to add new features to better the user experience,” writes Android Central, which provides a detailed instruction set on how to use the new feature.