Meta has announced a new feature to be added to Messenger. Called “Community Chats;” the Discord-like feature allows large Messenger groups to organize chats into categories, including audio and video channels. The feature also allows users to engage in discussions, admin-only chats for announcements and event chats, and more.
“We’re building Community Chats as a new way to connect with people who share your interests,” Zuckerberg wrote. “More than 1 billion people use Messenger to communicate with friends, and soon you’ll be able to start Community Chats from Messenger as well as Facebook Groups.”
Admins will have the power to remove messages and block, mute or suspend group members. This is based on the fact that most interactions will be with people you may not know. As an admin, your moderation tool also empowers you to remove certain foul languages, and automatically ban users who send messages with those words.
You can start Community Chats from both Messenger and Facebook Groups. Community Chats starts rolling out as a test and expands to groups in the next couple of weeks.
In March, Meta announced a couple of new features to Messenger. The features are not entirely new; especially to anyone that uses Slack. Anyone who types @everyone in a chat in Messenger will alert the entire group to his message.
Also added, is a /silent function that ensures your messages arrive in the chat without anyone knowing. Instagram also announced a similar feature, and ensures no one is alerted to a new message late at night.
To use the feature, simply type /silent before your message and you are in ghost mode. The two features are already live on both iOS and Android, and are available for all users.
Meta also announced “Pay,” a new feature that makes it easier to send and receive money within your one-on-one Messenger chats. To use Pay, simply type /pay to send or request money securely without fees – perfect for quickly paying a friend for dinner or getting paid back for a ride.
In February, Meta launched its “Split Payments” feature on Messenger in the US. The social media giant began testing the feature in late 2021 and is now making it available to iOS and Android users. Split Payments is a feature that allows users to share the cost of bills and expenses through the Messenger app.
