Threads has launched a communities feature that could transform how users use its app. Meta announced Thursday that it has opened more than 100 communities worldwide, where users can freely chat about topics like basketball, television, K-pop, books, and more.
According to Meta, this new feature aims to create private spaces where users can engage in deeper and more meaningful conversations about topics they’re interested in. The communities users join will now be displayed on their Threads profiles. Each community will also feature a unique “Like” emoji, which can only be used by members of that community.
X Similarity Draws Attention
While Threads’ “Communities” feature may seem similar to X’s similar feature at first glance, there are significant differences between the two platforms.
Communities on X offer private spaces where users can interact around shared interests. However, because these communities are created and managed directly by users, they adopt a model more similar to Reddit. On X, community posts are publicly viewable, but only users who have joined the community can actively participate in discussions.
On the Threads side, community control is entirely within the company. Users cannot create their own communities; they can only join existing ones. Furthermore, users who are not members of the communities on Threads can also participate in discussions, making the platform more open and interactive.
Community posts shared on Threads are visible to all users in the “For You” and “Following” streams, just like on X. However, interacting with posts and enjoying privileges like a special “Like” emoji are only available to community members.
For example, in the NBA Threads community, posts can be liked with a basketball emoji, while in the Book Threads community, this emoji is represented by a stack of books. Meta also plans to offer special profile badges for active community administrators soon.
The way communities are integrated into the app on Threads differs from X in some ways. On both platforms, when users join a community, their membership is displayed on the community’s public page. However, on Threads, this visibility is taken a step further. The community’s hashtag is added directly to the user’s profile.
Users can now post directly to the relevant community without having to manually add the hashtag. They can also rearrange their feeds to highlight posts from the communities they engage with most, making their favorite communities the default view.
Finally, recent data reveals that Threads is getting closer to X in terms of daily active users on mobile. Meta notes that they are currently testing the most engaged communities on Threads, but they plan to expand this scope and roll out many more communities in the future.
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