Threads New Communities Feature: Connect & Share

Instagram Threads Launches Communities Feature

Instagram Threads, Meta’s competitor to X (formerly Twitter), boasting over 400 million monthly active users, is introducing a significant new feature: Communities. Meta announced on Thursday the rollout of more than 100 communities within the app. These spaces are designed to facilitate discussions around diverse interests, including basketball, television, K-pop, and literature.

Dedicated Spaces for Focused Conversations

Meta’s objective is to provide users with specialized areas within the application. This allows for more in-depth engagement on subjects they find compelling. A user’s joined communities will be visible on their Threads profile. Each community also features a unique “Like” emoji for members to utilize when interacting with posts.

How Threads Communities Differ from X’s

While superficially similar to X’s Communities, key distinctions exist in their implementation.

X’s Communities function as spaces for connection based on shared interests, mirroring the structure of Reddit. These communities are established and managed by X users themselves. Posts within these communities are visible to all X users, but participation is limited to members.

Meta’s Curated Approach

Conversely, Meta is directly responsible for the creation of communities within its app. User-generated communities are not currently permitted. Furthermore, participation in Threads community discussions is open to all users, even those who haven’t formally joined.

Visibility and Special Privileges

Similar to X, posts from Threads communities can appear in users’ feeds – both the For You and Following feeds. However, exclusive benefits, such as access to a community’s custom “Like” emoji, are reserved for members.

For example, the NBA Threads community utilizes a basketball emoji, while the Book Threads community features a stack of books as its custom “Like”. Meta also plans to introduce profile badges for active community builders in the near future.

Improved Ranking and Integration

Meta intends to test enhanced ranking algorithms. These will prioritize the most engaging posts, both within the communities themselves and across the broader For You feed.

The integration of Threads communities with the app’s other features differs from X’s approach. When a user joins a community on Threads, this membership is displayed on the community’s public page. Additionally, a related topic tag is added to the user’s profile, and this association cannot be hidden, as per Meta’s design intent.

Leveraging Existing User Behavior

Meta’s approach to communities may prove more effective than X’s, as it aligns with how Threads users have organically interacted with the platform. Following its launch, users began organizing around Topic Tags – an evolved form of the hashtag without the “#” symbol. Tags like NBA Threads naturally evolved into established communities even before the official feature was introduced.

Now, users can directly post to these communities, eliminating the need to remember the topic tag. They can also customize their feeds to prioritize a favorite community’s content.

Following a Proven Model

Users have long incorporated topics and hashtags into their profiles to indicate their interests and encourage conversation.

Twitter successfully employed a similar strategy in its early stages, developing features like hashtags, retweets, quote tweets, and mentions by observing and formalizing user behavior. Threads is now mirroring this approach with communities, potentially driving increased engagement. Recent data suggests Threads is gaining ground on X in terms of daily active users on mobile.

Initial Rollout and Future Expansion

Meta is initially testing communities across its most active interest areas on Threads. Further communities will be launched in the future. Prior to the beta test, a small group of testers were invited to preview the feature, and Instagram head Adam Mosseri hinted at its arrival over the past weekend.