The Twitter that we were familiar with 5 years ago is very different from the one we use today. With the introduction of features such as Spaces, Fleets, or premium service Twitter Blue, Twitter has evolved into something more than just a way to send tweets. The most recent thing they’re working on is Communities, which are invitation-only groups.
Users can now be invited to a variety of Twitter communities, which are based on specific themes such as dogs, astronomy, or sneakers. Once you’ve joined the community, tweets that relate to the topic will appear.
imagine an alternate timeline where everyone just gets you
say hi to Communities—the place to connect with people who Tweet like you. testing now on iOS and web, Android soon! pic.twitter.com/TJdKwUa4D2
— Twitter Communities (@JoinCommunities) September 8, 2021
Communities can have their own moderators who set rules for being inside, invite users or remove them from the community. They say they are working on ways to improve this, as well as discovering new communities and allowing them to create communities themselves.
The Reddit of Twitter
If this functionality is to be extrapolated, the biggest analogy we can find is Reddit with its subreddits. On Reddit users can create subreddits where they can post on specific topics, as well as join subreddits already created by other users. Here there are also moderators who set the rules for being part of the community and what kind of content is accepted within the community.
We’ve watched how pseudo-groups have been formed on Twitter in recent years based on certain themes. Twitter itself created Topics, which automatically collects tweets on specific themes and allows users to follow particular subjects, in a similar way. In a sense, communities are the natural progression following.
Twitter’s initiatives are an attempt to retain new users. One of Twitter’s shortcomings is that it attracts a lot of new people, but after they join, they quickly lose interest because they don’t know which accounts to follow or how to discover and enjoy the stuff they’re interested in. As a result, topics, lists, the Discovery tool, and
Communities are still a test, and they appear to people all around the world. The function will show in the lower bar of the iOS app as well as the sidebar on the web. Android users will just be able to view tweets from communities to which they belong at this time, although it is not in the app itself.
