X is rolling out a revamped version of its Communities feature, which lets users network around topics of interest, each with its own dedicated space and timeline. The company on Thursday announced a number of changes to Communities, including improved discovery tools, recommendations, search, and sorting options, with other updates on the way.
The broader goal is to connect more of X’s user base with with other people, where they can post about a particular topic and comment on posts from others.
Communities are an important part of making X, formerly Twitter, a more valuable company, in terms of the data it has to offer. Already, Elon Musk’s X has a relationship with his AI company xAI, and xAI’s Grok chatbot has access to real-time X data, or what used to be known as tweets. But with X’s Communities, the company could build something just as valuable as the Twitter firehose. In an ideal world, Communities could grow to become a source of information that could rival Reddit, where data is now only available to those who pay, earning it millions. (Whether X Communities will ever reach Reddit scale, of course, is debatable. Still, even with some increased usage of the feature, xAI and Grok could benefit.)
With Thursday’s revamp, X users will now be able to discover posts from new Communities that are trending directly from an Explore tab within the section. (Note this is different from the Explore tab that shows what’s Trending across all of X, accessible from the app’s main navigation.)
X will also begin showing users recommendations for Communities on their timeline, which is another big push to help the feature gain more attention. Plus, it will be easier to discover Communities since they’ll be searchable by topic. After people join Communities, they will be able to sort posts by what’s trending in the Communities they’re a part of, the company explains in a post on its Communities account.
Later, Communities will also add community analytics for moderators, Community Spaces (X’s live audio product), and better moderation tools, the company says.
If X can convince more users to join and post in Communities, it could increase the amount of data it could provide to Grok, which would benefit both X and xAI. The former already offers access to the Grok chatbot for its paid subscribers, and xAI gets wide distribution for Grok via X, as well.