Threads is trying out another avenue to take on X, with the addition of dedicated group discussion communities in the app, similar to X’s communities option, with selected Threads users now being invited to join these topical group chats in the app.
As you can see in this example, posted by Threads user @rayofsuunshine, some Threads users have been sent an emailed invitation from the Threads team to join relevant communities.
As per the note:
“Communities help you find and connect with your people […] and soon, there’ll be more features that recognize the active voices in a community. We will be looking at posts that give feedback on this new experience to keep improving and plan to share more about what’s next for communities soon.”
Threads chief Adam Mosseri has also commented on the launch of communities, noting that there’s still a lot of work to do in making them more engaging.
And while invites have only been sent to specific people, all users can seemingly now join communities on Threads based on certain topics, with a selection of communities now in circulation.
Once you join a community, the topic of that group will be added as an interest on your Threads profile, while you’ll also be able to quickly access each community that you join from the left-hand side navigation menu (as you can see in this example from @yorush).
You can also rearrange the listings of your communities, and even set a community feed as your default, if you choose.
Posts submitted to communities will be accessible in these dedicated feeds, while they’ll also be shown in your “For You” feed, with a special label to indicate that they’re from a community discussion.
Threads is specifically inviting certain users to help kick off the discussion in these new group chats, but all users can join by searching for relevant communities.
Threads has actually been developing its own Communities option for some time, with the initial elements of its communities feature spotted in testing a year ago.
More recently, it’s begun adding more elements of Threads communities to the back end code, including listings of communities that you can join in the app.
The idea is that this will help Threads boost engagement, by connecting users around relevant discussions in the app. And with X reporting
And with X reporting last March that time spent in communities had grown by 600% year-over-year, with around 650,000 community posts being created daily, there’s clearly demand for a more focused engagement option, that will help Threads users find more relevant people to follow and interact with in the app.
As such, it’s a smart activation for Threads. And while it’s still in early development, and still being tested before a broader announcement, it could be worth looking up any communities related to your topics of interest, and seeing if you can find any new connection opportunities.
And maybe, this will be the thing that puts Threads over the top. Reports have suggested that Threads is now seeing more daily active usage than X, and if communities takes off, that could solidify it as the real-time platform of choice for many more groups.
Another element to watch as Threads continues to expand.
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