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Meta's text-first Instagram offshoot, Threads, is rolling out a Communities feature that looks a lot like the discussion hubs users already know from competing platforms. Built to group conversations around interests — from sports to K-pop — Communities aim to make discovery and interaction on Threads more focused and social.
What Communities bring to Threads
Think of Communities as Meta's take on subreddits or topic-driven groups. The feature has been in development for more than a year — traces of a feature called "Loops" surfaced in the app last year, showing join and leave options — and Meta is now testing public communities across a variety of popular subjects.
Communities sit on top of Threads' existing building blocks like custom feeds and single-topic tags. Unlike Instagram hashtags, Threads topic tags are primarily for categorization, not reach: each post can carry just one tag, helping keep conversations tight and thematic instead of broadly amplified.
How to find, join, and show your favorites
Searching is simple: type a topic to see if a community exists, or tap a topic tag on a post. A three-dot icon next to a tag signals a dedicated community. When you join, membership is public — Communities are pinned to your feeds menu and tagged on your profile so other users know your interests at a glance.
Meta has already seeded more than 100 communities in tests, covering areas like NBA/WNBA Threads, Book Threads, K-pop Threads, and TV Threads. But the experience is still expanding — not every niche has its own space yet.
Small touches that shape the vibe
Meta is adding personality and recognition to Communities. Each community gets a custom emoji: NBA Threads members, for example, will see a basketball icon when they like posts. The company is also preparing special contributor badges for users who help build and sustain popular discussions — think of it as Threads' version of Facebook's top fan badges.
Ranking, recommendations, and more control
To surface better content, Meta is testing ranking inside communities and on the For You page so the most relevant posts appear first. Beyond ranking, the company is developing ways for users to control recommendation algorithms across both Threads and Instagram, giving people more say over what shows up in their feeds.
Why it matters
For users, Communities offer a clearer path to find like-minded people and deeper conversations. For Meta, they're another step toward feature parity with rival platforms and a way to keep engagement high. Whether Communities will become the defining feature of Threads depends on adoption and how well moderation and discovery are handled as the experiment scales.
Imagine joining a Book Threads group, spotting a dedicated emoji when a fellow reader likes a comment, and earning a badge for leading lively discussions — it’s small details like these that could make Threads feel more like a neighborhood and less like a feed.
Source: neowin
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