X Shuts Down Communities Feature Due to Low Usage and Spam

X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, has announced the shutdown of its Communities feature, citing low usage and high levels of spam.

Launched in 2021, Communities were meant to provide users with a place to connect with each other around shared interests. However, according to X's head of product Nikitia Bier, the feature was overrun with spam and a headache to manage.

Communities had a great vision, but they were used by less than 0.4% of users—yet contributed to 80% of spam reports, financial scams, and malware on X.

Bier explained that the feature was used by hardly anyone, yet it occupied half the team's time some weeks, while the rest of the app suffered. In other words, Communities often weren't being used for their original purpose. Instead, they had become a place focused on driving (often paid) traffic to other online creators outside of X itself.

• Clipping is the practice of sharing short clips of another creator's work or a brand's video, for which the clipper is compensated. Marketers and creators leverage these communities to generate interest in their original content.

Bier even scoffed at X's failed Communities project as a "Temu version of subreddits" — a reference to the groups found within the more popular interest-based social network, Reddit.

What's Next for X

X is not giving up on communities; the company will take a different approach. The company has launched Custom Timelines for its Premium subscribers, which allow users to pin different topical feeds to their Home tab. These feeds are also curated and personalized to the individual user, based on how they engage with X.

• In addition to the expanded group chats, the company is planning to support "joinable" links for group chats. These public links can be shared on X's timeline and pinned, and support up to 350 members per chat.

The group chat may support even more members in the future, Bier suggested. X's product releases and updates have been hitting at a faster pace as of late, with X's plans for its XChat app and another for payments, plus new features like cashtags, mute buttons for topics, voice notes in chat, a new photo editor, automatic translations, new reply settings, and the new custom timelines.

Conclusion

X is moving on from its failed Communities project and is focusing on other features that will bring value to its users. With its new approach, X is taking a step in the right direction, and its users are likely to benefit from it.