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After testing the option with selected users over recent weeks, Threads has now officially announced a broader rollout of topic based communities. These communities provide a more direct pathway for users to discover relevant discussions and connect with like minded people within the app.
Threads Communities: How They Work
Communities on Threads function as dedicated spaces for topic based conversation much like how users engage in groups or forums on other platforms. Posts submitted to any community you join will also appear in your “For You” feed, marked with a community tag so readers know they originated in that space.
At launch, Meta says users can access over 100 communities across trending areas such as basketball, books, K pop, AI, and TV topics.
You can discover communities by searching them by name or tapping the three dot icon beside a topic tag in your feed, which indicates a dedicated community exists.
Once you join, that community becomes pinned in your feeds menu (accessible by swiping right from the main feed) and is shown on your profile under topic tags so others can see your interests.
Each group also gets its own custom “Like” emoji for example, a basketball for “NBA Threads” to add a sense of identity to interactions.
Meta’s Intent and Signals
Meta frames communities as an evolution of Threads’ existing topic tags and custom feed tools. Now users have a defined space to explore deeper conversations.
Meta also indicates that additional features are in development, including special badges to recognize standout community contributors and improved ranking algorithms that surface the most relevant posts both within communities and in users’ For You feeds.
One notable difference from X’s communities is that in Threads, Meta itself curates and controls the communities rather than enabling users to create new ones. Non members may still view or participate in community discussions under certain conditions.
The Broader Context: Adoption and Challenges
Communities already prove popular elsewhere. X saw time spent in communities increase 600 percent year over year, signaling high demand for topic centric engagement.
But adoption is a challenge. Shifting user behavior from general feed browsing to group participation requires momentum. Meta is essentially formalizing behavior that already existed, since before the communities rollout, users formed informal Topic Threads around subjects they cared about.
Moderation and content curation will also become more critical, as more focused groups can magnify toxicity or spam if unmonitored. Threads must scale tools for content filtering, community admin controls, and abuse detection to preserve quality.
With over 400 million monthly users on Threads, even modest adoption in niche communities can lead to significant engagement.
