Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Twitter is rolling out its Communities feature, a rival to Facebook Groups and Reddit, to Android users worldwide. Since its launch in September, Twitter Communities has been limited to iOS or the web, meaning Android users could only join and participate in communities through a browser and not the native Twitter app.
Android users can now easily join, request to join, or participate in Twitter Communities, opening up the feature to a lot more of Twitterâs userbase. Twitter Communities work like a private group, or like a subreddit. Twitter users can choose to tweet directly to a Twitter community, and that tweet wonât show up on their own feed or to their followers.
Twitter Communities is still an invite-only feature for those wanting to create their own private community. Group owners can choose whether people need an invite to join a community or whether theyâre open.
If youâre interested in trying out the Twitter Communities feature, Twitter is highlighting the Roblox, Xbox Community, Tech Twitter, Fashion, R&B Twitter, and Formula 1 communities that are all public for anyone to join.
Twitter is also exploring a ârequest to joinâ option for communities, so groups can more closely monitor who joins a community. Alongside this new option, Twitter is also planning to test a ranked timeline that will show top tweets from a community, ways for mods to highlight content in community, and methods for Q&As to be held with mods or members.