What Ended

X has announced the shutdown of its Communities feature, effective May 30. This feature allowed users to create, join, and moderate public groups centered around specific interests. The feature was launched prior to the acquisition and rebranding of Twitter by Elon Musk. It has been reported that less than 0.4% of users engaged with Communities, despite their introduction being designed to enhance user interaction on the platform. The feature was also linked to an increase in spam reports, financial scams, and malware incidents, accounting for 80% of such reports on X. The operational burden of managing Communities occupied a significant portion of the product team's resources, impacting the development of other app features.

Why It Mattered

The Communities feature aimed to facilitate interest-based group discussions within X. However, its underutilization indicated a lack of user engagement. The reported issues with spam and scams diminished the overall user experience on the platform. Communities were expected to foster niche conversations but instead became channels for user acquisition for alternative platforms and monetization schemes. This misalignment with intended use cases rendered the feature ineffective, leading to operational inefficiencies and resource misallocation within the product team.

What Replaced It / What Gap Remains

X is transitioning users to its new XChat app for group discussions, allowing for real-time communication with up to 350 members per chat, with future plans to expand to 1,000 members. Moderators can share links to group chats in their Communities until the feature's full retirement. Additionally, users can utilize the new custom timelines feature, which organizes posts around specific topics using Grok technology. However, the dynamic and synchronous nature of group chats differs significantly from the asynchronous community interactions that Communities provided. As a result, users seeking a dedicated feed of posts focused on specific interests may find themselves at a disadvantage.