Group creation and limits

As long you have an account on wechat, you can freely create a group. They are limited to 500 members. As long as there is up to 100 members you and members can generate a QR code to invite people in. The QR code is only valid for one week though. When the group has reached 100 members it will automatically become an invite only group. It means that only a member of the group can invite you in and previously created QR codes have no more effect. Furthermore, things get serious so brace yourself, from 100 members, all the new members must have their wechat account linked with a bank card. Why is that? I reckon that this is a way for wechat (and Chinese government) to have the real identities of the members thus being able to identify them. Indeed, you needed your ID to open a bank account right?

Features:

A group can only have one administrator.

What an administrator can do that member can’t :

  • He can remove people from the group (but cannot blacklist them so any other members friend with the removed one can invite him back in)

  • He can send a group notice. What is a group notice? It is a message sent to everybody in the group. Every members will have a notification saying they’ve been mentioned (@) by somebody in the group. Then the the group notice will stay in the group description and available to see for new members until the next group notice.

  • He can name another administrator.

What the administrator can’t do :

  • Remove messages

What members and administrators can do :

  • Set an alias specifically for the group
  • Surprisingly, everybody has the ability to edit the group name!

Other features : Everybody can send red packets into the group. Red packets can contain up to 200 rmb in electronic cash that is randomly shared by people opening it.

I will update this post if I think of other interesting features.