Whatsapp Groups are better suited for very personal groups, like a family group or a sister’s group, where everyone can reply to everyone at the same time. It could also be for when you want an open communication mechanism when you brainstorm ideas with a group of people or just planning a trip with your friends. Everyone in this group will also know and see everyone else’s private phone numbers. It can be described as a common chat, where every message is seen by everyone, immaterial of who sent it.
Whatsapp Broadcasts are better suited for business communication and schools as the people in the list cannot see the other people in the broadcast list. It makes this communication type far more private and secure. It can be described as a 1 to 1 chat. Broadcast lists are a bit like BCC (blind carbon copy) in email. Although multiple people may be in the BCC list, none of them knows or sees who is in the list, as these details are not shared. Its like a private message not to one, but many contacts.
This option is therefore also more in line with the POPI Act in SA that is now in effect, as you are not sharing private information.
The disadvantage for the originator is that each recipient must have your contact number in their address book, else the broadcast will not reach them. This can be overcome by requesting each recipient to add you to their address book. This restriction protects everyone against spam. A broadcast list is limited to 256 contacts, the same as a WhatsApp group. Contacts are added to the broadcast list the same way contacts are added to a group. When the creator of a broadcast list adds a contact, no-one in the broadcast list will know it, not even the newly added contact. The same applies to when a contact is deleted.
Recipients will know they are getting a message from a broadcast list when they see a megaphone symbol in the message. Other than that, it simply looks like a regular WhatsApp chat. The main advantage is that if a recipient replies, such reply will ONLY go to the broadcast list creator.
Conclusion
Many Whatsapp Groups today should be Whatsapp Broadcast lists.
A typical example here is a shop selling groceries. The group admin sends out all the specials to 200 people. 50 contacts reply with their orders. Each reply sends to 200 people. That creates 10,000 messages (200x50) instead of 50 messages. Hence 9,950 (that is 99,5%) of the messages can be considered spam. What happens then? You either get reported with a possibility of getting your Whatsapp account revoked, or most people leave your group.
The Whatsapp Group admin can then decide that only admin can send messages. Oops, then no-one can place orders. And admin is still sharing personal information.
Admin, please create a Whatsapp Broadcast list. You won’t contribute to spam. You won’t be sharing personal information. You won’t be reported to Whatsapp and possibly have your account revoked. You will potentially will get more orders. Everyone wins.
