Meta has introduced a new “live chats” feature to Threads, enabling people on the platform to participate in real-time conversations about live events they’re interested in. Live chats can be hosted within Threads communities, the topic-specific social spaces that Meta introduced last year.
The new feature sounds a bit like Threads’ take on Instagram’s broadcast channels, but the latter only allows for one-way messaging. Live chats can be hosted by select creators, including Community Champions — users highly engaged within specific communities — and media personalities. Once a chat is launched or scheduled, the host chooses who is invited to contribute and can then share the link publicly.
You can post photos, videos, links and emoji reactions as well as text-based messages. If you’re unable to send messages in a live chat that is at capacity, you can still watch it, react to others messages and vote in polls. Live chats remain open to view after they’ve ended, and you don’t need to be part of a community to join.
Meta is debuting its new social feature in the NBAThreads Community during the Playoffs, with Malika Andrews, Rachel Nichols, Trysta Krick, David Rushing and Lexis Mickens named as hosts. Live chats will appear at the top of the NBAThreads Community feed, and can also be shared in a post that might appear on your main feed in Threads. You’ll also see a red ring around a host’s profile photo when they’re live.
Meta says live chats will gradually be rolled out to more communities on Threads, with features like co-hosting, lock screen widgets and the ability to quote and share messages from a chat on your feed coming soon.
Meta has been steadily expanding its X rival’s features since it launched in 2023. It started small with searchable topics (note: not hashtags) and custom feeds, before rolling out communities last year. It also started testing long-form text posts and just this week gave Threads a long-overdue facelift on web. Back in October, the company announced that its text-based social media platform now has 150 million daily users.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/threads-introduces-live-chats-for-following-live-events-170007658.html?src=rss
