x is launching a revamped version of its Communities feature, allowing users to network around topics of interest, each with their own dedicated space and timeline. The company announced a number of changes to communities on Thursday, including improved discovery tools, recommendations, search and ranking options, with other updates on the way.
The broader goal is to connect more x users with other people, where they can post about a particular topic and comment on others' posts.
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Communities are an important part of making x, formerly twitter, a more valuable company, in terms of the data it has to offer. Elon Musk's x already 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 as valuable as twitter's 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, allowing them to make millions. (Of course, it's debatable whether x Communities will ever reach the scale of Reddit. Still, even with increased use of the feature, xAI and Grok could benefit.)
With Thursday's revamp, x users will now be able to discover trending posts from new communities directly from an Explore tab within the section. (Note that this is different from the Explore tab that shows trends across all of x, which can be accessed from the app's main navigation.)
x will also start showing users recommendations for communities on their timeline, which is another big boost to help the feature gain more attention. In addition, it will be easier to discover communities since they can be searched by topic. After people join communities, they will be able to sort posts based on trends in the communities they are a part of, the company explains. twitter.com/HiCommunities/status/1791184745931382818″>in a post on your Communities account.
Going forward, 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 to 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 also gets wide distribution for Grok through x.
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