What’s the Difference Between Personal Chat and Group Chat?


Personal Chat

For when you want to create a conversation not as members of a common group, but as a unique combination of users.  There can only be one Personal chat that exists between users A, B, and C.  Whereas with a Group chat, users A, B, and C could all be in lots of different groups together.

There is no owner of a Personal chat.  So no one has the ability to moderate the content of someone else. While you can block, mute, and leave the chat, you can’t kick someone else out (they’d have to leave on their own).

Your notification preferences for Personal chats are universal to all of your Personal chats.

If you were to leave, or even delete, the group that the chat originally started from then it will have no impact on a Personal chat.  It will survive because it’s based on the unique users in that chat and not on their memberships in a particular group.

If someone is added to a Personal chat they cannot see the messages that were sent before they joined.

As a general rule, it’s best to limit the users in a Personal chat to ten or fewer.  Nothing wrong with exceeding that number, but unless you have a specific purpose in mind then you probably want to think about making it a Group chat instead.

Group Chat

There are admins and owner(s) of a Group chat.  So they can moderate content, easily manage the membership, and control the settings of the group.

Your notification preferences for Group chats are set on a group by group basis so you can dial the noise up or down as you wish for each group.

If you delete a group, or leave a group, then its chat will disappear too.  Unlike Personal chats, Group chats are based entirely on membership in its group.  So if that membership goes away then so does its chat.

If someone is added to a Group chat they can see the entire history of messages, just like they would all of the posts in a group’s feed or calendar.

There is no limit, or floor, to the number of members in a Group chat.  You can have a group with just 2 members, or a thousand.

How to create a Group Chat?

There are two ways to get a Group chat going.  The first is by creating a standard, full-featured group from your Home screen.  A chat will automatically be created for the entire group as just one of the many features that would come with that new group.

However, if you’re just looking for a place to chat and don’t need the zillions of features that a regular group comes with, you can create a chat-only group from your Messages screen.

Start your group now and join our community!