Meta’s take on a Twitter/X rival, Instagram Threads, may be inching further into its competitor’s territory with the development of a communities feature that would presumably allow users to better organize their discussions on the platform by topics. At least that’s what references in the app’s code seem to imply.
The code mentions a new feature, called Loops, which was spotted on Monday by Threads early adopter and veteran technologist Chris Messina. The new strings he discovered were introduced in the latest app update and mention things like the joining and leaving of “Loop” communities, as well as fields that refer to the community name, bio, and other elements. (In addition, mentions of “BCN” in the code refer to Barcelona, the internal code name for Threads ahead of its launch; “TextApp” serves as a similar reference.)
Reached for comment, Instagram did not confirm its plans for these Loop communities or what the feature may entail. However, the company did say the feature was in early development and is not testing either internally or externally at this time.
While X’s Communities have not been a standout addition as of yet, X owner Elon Musk has high hopes for their further growth. Since acquiring the social network, Musk has promoted X Communities’ growth and improvement. Earlier this April, he reshared a post that touted how X members were spending 495% more time in Communities, and time spent was up over 600% year-over-year. He also often shares or reshares posts about Communities updates, like the addition of an Explore tab, the ability for moderators to pin posts, timeline sorting options, and other changes that could help X’s feature challenge Reddit’s communities, known as subreddits.
Musk last year also noted that X was deprecating the private sharing feature, Circles, in favor of improved Communities.
Introducing a similar Communities feature on Threads could also make sense, not only because it makes the app more competitive with X, but also because it reflects how Threads users have begun to organize themselves on the platform.
Since Threads did away with the traditional hashtag in favor of a different type of hyperlinked tag for following topics, users began tagging their posts to reach different groups using the format of “topic name” followed by the word “Threads.” For example, you can follow tags like “Tech Threads,” “Design Threads,” “Fitness Threads,” “Sports Threads,” and so on.
However, this system can be confusing because it’s not based on the hashtag that users are already familiar with, and some people include a space between the topic and the word “Threads” while others do not.
Creating communities to organize topical discussions could be a potential solution to the problem, while also perhaps adding a moderation layer.
Messina is not the only one to have spotted Loops. Reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi also found the feature earlier this month and showed how it may look in action. He noted that Threads was working on adding a Loops shortcut to the composer and the home header, as well.
Updated, 10/8/23, 1:43 pm et with additional image from Paluzzi.
