Back when the future of X (formerly known as Twitter) was unclear due to Elon Musk announcing he would buy the social media platform, many companies jumped at the opportunity to become the new Twitter. This included Meta, which launched Threads . While X is still alive and well(-ish), Threads has decided to add a new feature to bring it more on par with its competitor: communities.
Threads gets new communities feature
Meta has revealed that it’s rolling out over 100 communities on Threads. These communities will cover popular topics like basketball, television, books, and K-pop. These public spaces allow users to dive deeper into conversations that matter to them, while helping to build on existing features like custom feeds and topic tags.
Each community comes with its own custom Like emoji, adding personality to interactions between members. For example, Book Threads users can like posts with a stack of books emoji, while NBA Threads features a basketball. When you join a community, it becomes publicly visible on your profile and gets pinned to your feeds menu, making it easy for others to see your interests.
Meta also plans to introduce special badges for standout community contributors who help establish popular discussion topics . The company is also working on improved ranking systems to surface the most relevant posts first, both within communities and across the For You feed.
Same same, but different
Now, unlike Instagram Stories, which honestly felt like a direct copy of Snapchat, Thread communities will differ slightly from those on X . The main difference comes in the form of moderation.
Unlike X, where users create and moderate their own communities, Meta creates and manages all Threads Communities. Additionally, anyone can participate in community discussions on Threads, not just members, though only members get access to special perks like custom emojis.
In some ways it’s good that Meta is doing the moderation. The company has been accused in the past of letting Facebook Groups run rampant. At least with communities, Meta will take a more active role. At the moment, communities are in beta testing. The company is also testing communities across the most active interests. However, the company plans to launch more in the future.
