Threads Rolls Out Expanded Communities Feature, Tests Engagement-Based Badges For Select Users
Users can follow a wider range of communities tailored to particular interests.
Meta confirmed on Monday that Threads is rolling out more topics across its communities feature. The microblogging platform is testing new badges for users based on their engagement in a community.
Threads introduced its communities feature in October, with over 100 topic-based groups aimed at boosting competition with other social platforms. Areas covered included basketball, television, K-pop and books.
With the newest rollout, Threads now hosts upwards of 200 communities, including dedicated spaces for teams like the Lakers, Knicks and Spurs, reported TechCrunch.
Alongside its community expansion, the company is piloting a new feature called ‘flairs' that allows users to add personalised labels beneath their usernames. The feature, widely used on Reddit, enables members to exhibit interests such as team loyalties in NBA groups or authorship within book communities.
“Members can add a label to show what they talk about in their community. For example, you can specify which team you would like to discuss in NBA Threads. Community champions choose the flair options, and any flair you select will appear on all your posts in that community,” Meta said in a newsroom post.
Threads is also rolling out a test of the “Champion” badge, which is intended to spotlight top contributors. The company said that the badge is currently limited to a small pool of users who are active participants and well-followed within their communities.
“Community champion badges: People who are highly followed by other community members, regularly post in a community, and keep conversations going in the replies can receive a special profile badge as recognition for shaping their community,” Meta said.
The community update follows the introduction of topics and custom feeds on Threads, which already allow users to curate streams around particular subjects and accounts. Adding communities to that framework is intended to improve content discovery, according to The Verge.
The social network has emerged as a challenger to Elon Musk’s X and smaller platforms like Bluesky, reaching over 400 million users by August, two years after its debut, as per TechCrunch. The company has said that daily traffic has since climbed to over 150 million users.
