Instagram Threads, Meta’s answer to X and now boasting more than 400 million monthly users, is rolling out a significant new feature: Communities. On Thursday, Meta announced it is adding over 100 communities to Threads, giving users around the globe the chance to casually discuss topics such as basketball, TV shows, K-pop, literature, and more.
According to Meta, the goal is to provide users with specific areas in the app where they can engage in deeper conversations about subjects they care about. The communities a user joins will be visible on their Threads profile, and each community offers a unique “Like” emoji that members can use when interacting with posts.
Image Credits:Meta
Although this idea may seem similar to X’s Communities at first glance, there are important distinctions between how each platform implements the feature.
X’s Communities also serve as dedicated spaces for users to connect over shared interests, but they function more like Reddit, since X users themselves create and moderate these groups. Posts within a community are visible to all X users, but only members can participate in the discussions.
In contrast, Meta is in charge of creating all communities on Threads, and users cannot create their own. Additionally, people who aren’t members can still join in on community conversations.
Image Credits:Meta
Just like on X, posts from Threads communities can show up for anyone on the platform, including in the For You and Following feeds. However, only those who have joined a Threads community can access its exclusive features, such as a custom “Like” emoji for posts.
For example, the NBA Threads community uses a basketball emoji for likes, while the Book Threads group lets users like posts with a stack of books emoji. Soon, active community leaders will also receive a special badge on their profiles.
Meta also plans to experiment with improved ranking algorithms to surface the best posts first, both within communities and in the broader For You feed.
The way Threads communities interact with other parts of the app is also somewhat distinct from X’s approach.
On Threads, as with X, joining a community means others can see your membership on the community’s public page. But Threads also adds the community’s topic tag to your profile. Meta told TechCrunch there’s no option to hide this, as the feature is intended to let others quickly see your interests on the app.
Image Credits:Threads (screenshot)
Meta’s approach to communities could prove more effective than X’s, as it builds on how Threads users have already been engaging with the platform. Soon after Threads launched, users began organizing around Topic Tags—essentially hashtags without the “#”—with some, like NBA Threads, evolving into established communities even before the official feature was available.
Now, users can post directly within a community without needing to remember to add a topic tag, and they can even set their favorite community’s feed as their default view.
Image Credits:Meta
Additionally, for quite some time, users have been adding topics and hashtags to their profiles to let others know what subjects they’re interested in and open to discussing.
Adapting to user behavior proved successful for Twitter in its early years, as features like hashtags, retweets, quote tweets, and mentions all originated from observing how people used the platform, then formalizing those habits. Threads is now taking a similar approach with communities, which could help it attract more users. Recent data shows Threads is already narrowing the gap with X in terms of daily active users on mobile.
Meta says it is starting by testing communities around the most popular interests on Threads, with plans to add more in the future. Before today’s beta launch, a select group of testers was invited to try out the feature, and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri previewed it over the weekend.
