Instagram Threads, Meta’s X Rival, which now has more than 400 million monthly active users, officially launches a new feature that could redefine the way its application is used: communities. Meta said on Thursday that she introduced more than 100 communities to the application, where users around the world can have occasional conversations on subjects such as basketball, television, k-pop, books and more.
The idea, explains Meta, is to give users dedicated spaces within the application where they can deepen conversations on subjects that matter to them. The communities that users have joined are displayed on their profile of Threads, and each community has its own emoji “like” personalized available for members who engage in discussions.
Although the concept, on the surface, looks like X communities, there are key differences between the two implementations.
X communities also offer a space dedicated to users to connect around a shared interest, but they are designed more like Reddit, because communities are created and moderate by X users. Community publications are also visible for other X users, but only those who have joined the community can participate in the discussion.
Meta, on the other hand, is responsible for the creation of communities on its application; This does not allow users to do their own. In addition, non-members can participate in community discussions.
As on X, publications of the Threads community can appear to anyone on the social network – including in the for you and the following flows. However, only those who have joined a community of threads can access its special privileges, which today include access to an emoji “like” personalized to engage with publications.
For example, emoji in the NBA Threads community are a basketball ball, while users of books of books can like a message with an emoji which is a pile of books. Soon, active community manufacturers will obtain their own profile badge.
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Meta says he will also test improved classification systems that highlight the best articles first, both within the communities themselves and for you, you feed more widely.
The way in which Threads communities integrate with other parts of the application are also different from X.
On threads (as on X), when users join a community, others see that you are a member of the public community page. But on the threads, the related subject subject tag is also added to your profile. There is no way to hide this association, Meta told Techcrunch, because the functionality is designed to allow others on the application of knowledge instantly what you are.
Meta taking on communities can ultimately work better than X, as it reflects how threads have already used the social network. Shortly after its launch, Meta Users organized itself around subject tags – an evolution of the hashtag which drops the hash symbol (“#”) – with a few tags, such as the NBA threads, becoming more well established communities before the introduction of the official function.
Now, these users can publish directly on the community without having to remember to include the subject’s label and can even reorganize their flows to make the community of a favorite community.
In addition, users, for a long time, added subjects and hashtags to their social media profiles to report to others what subjects they interest and could discuss.
The continuation of user trends worked well for Twitter in its beginnings, where concepts such as hashtag, retweet, quotation tweets, mentions and more were developed following the behavior of users, then formalizing these models in official functionalities. Threads now does the same with communities, which could help him win more traction. Already, Threads has caught up with X in terms of daily active ingredients on mobile devices, indicates recent data.
Meta says he initially tests communities through the most active interests he sees on threads, but that he will launch more in the future. Before today’s beta test, the company had invited a small number of testers to try the functionality, and the chief of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, teased the functionality last weekend.
