Meta"s text-based Instagram spin-off, Threads, is gaining another feature you can already find on its rival platform owned by Elon Musk. A new Communities feature has arrived on Threads for users who want to discuss specific interests or hobbies.
The feature can also be thought of as Meta"s version of subreddits, and it has been under development for at least a year now. References to a feature dubbed "Loops" were spotted in the Threads app last year, including the options to join and leave.
Communities build on top of existing Threads features like custom feeds and topic tags. Hashtags or topic tags on Threads function differently from those on Instagram and other platforms. They are more focused on categorizing a topic than increasing a post"s reach, and you can only add one tag per post.
Meta is testing communities around popular topics, including NBA/WNBA Threads, Book Threads, K-pop threads, and TV Threads. When you join a particular community, your membership will be public, and the community will be pinned to your feeds menu and tagged to your profile.
The company has picked a custom emoji for each community. For instance, people who are part of NBA Threads will see a basketball icon when they like a post.
You can search for a topic to find out if a community exists for it or tap a community tag on a post that shows up in your feed. If a topic tag displays a three-dot icon, it indicates that the topic has a dedicated community. The feature is still growing, and not every interest has a dedicated community. Still, Meta is testing the feature with more than 100 communities across different topics.
The company will add more communities soon, and it"s readying special badges for standout contributors in a community. These could be similar to how the top fan badge works on Facebook. Threads users who are "among the most active and engaged users on the app and have helped establish communities around the most popular discussion topics" will be awarded special badges.
Meta is also working to introduce ranking within communities and the For You page to surface relevant posts first. Speaking of which, the company is baking features for Threads and Instagram that will allow you to control your recommendation algorithm.