Meta is implementing a dual-pronged strategy to reshape its social platforms, focusing on deeper, niche engagement on Threads while aggressively transforming Instagram into a video-first experience. These simultaneous announcements demonstrate Meta’s commitment to competing directly with rivals and leveraging its massive user base to establish new communication norms.
Threads Communities: Finding Your People
Threads has rolled out Communities globally, creating more than 100 focused, public spaces designed for users to connect over specific shared interests. These groups build directly upon the platform’s existing topic tags and custom feeds, making it easier for users to find people who are equally passionate about subjects like sports, television, or K-Pop.
The technical design of Threads Communities differs significantly from the model used by its rival, X. On Threads, the communities are created and managed by Meta itself, ensuring they are official and standardized. Furthermore, unlike X, Threads allows non-members to join the conversation, fostering a more open discussion environment.
Membership in these groups is designed to become part of a user’s digital identity: communities joined will be tagged publicly on the user’s profile, instantly signalling their interests to others. The experience is gamified and personalized through unique features: each community boasts a custom “Like” emoji (for instance, a basketball for the NBA community), which triggers when a member likes a post, adding a distinct sense of belonging to the interaction. Meta will also introduce special badges for standout contributors and is testing new ranking systems to ensure the most relevant discussions surface first in both the community feeds and the broader “For You” feed.
Instagram’s Experimental Shift to Video-First
Concurrently, Instagram is testing a radical user interface (UI) shift that would cement its position in the short-form video market. The company is exploring making Reels the default tab view upon opening the app.
This experimental change, currently rolling out to select users, would fundamentally restructure the app’s hierarchy, prioritizing full-screen video consumption and algorithmic recommendations over the traditional home feed of photos and static posts. This reflects the reality that Reels and Direct Messages have driven most of Instagram’s growth in recent years. The shift aligns the app more closely with its competitor, TikTok, where endless video scrolling is the core engagement mechanism.
While the test ensures that photos from accounts users follow will still appear, the structural change raises concerns among creators who rely on static visual content, as a Reels-first feed could diminish their visibility. Conversely, it opens new avenues for video creators and advertisers, potentially accelerating content discovery through its prioritization of viral potential. This test follows a similar Reels-first design already implemented on the new Instagram iPad app.
Both new features are software updates applied globally through Meta’s platform. Threads Communities is currently available and being tested with over 100 active interests worldwide. The Instagram Reels default view test is underway in select regions and is not yet a broad rollout.
