X Makes Communities Posts More Visible to Nonmembers in the App

X has announced some new updates for its topic-based communities which will drive more exposure for community posts.

As explained by X, posts from communities will now be eligible to be displayed in other areas of the app, including the main feed, and within post recommendations.

Which could see community posts get a lot more reach, which could then enable X to capitalize on these discussions, by providing more opportunities to drive engagement.

Non-community members will also be able to reply to these updates, though as X notes, replies from community members will get priority, in order to ensure that in-community engagement is the focus.

Finally, X will now keep community content active even if a community is deleted.

Which seems potentially problematic, in that community discussions should probably be culled if a community is shut down, though X notes that individual users can delete their own comments if they choose.

I’m not sure that’s a great compromise in this case, but again, it’ll give X more content to display to its 250 million daily users.

It’s hard to tell how much communities are contributing to X’s overall engagement, because while X has sought to make them more of a focus, and has repeatedly noted that communities are seeing more usage over time, it also recently removed the communities tab from the bottom of the app navigation panel, replacing it with a dedicated video tab instead.

Which suggests that communities likely aren’t a key driver of engagement for most users. Otherwise X, presumably, wouldn’t move the button, but then again, I doubt that Grok is a key usage element for most users either. Yes, X is really keen to push its AI chatbot tool, with the other tabs being its main functional elements.

Though as noted, last March, X reported that time spent in communities had grown +600% year-over-year, with around 650,000 community posts being created daily.

Maybe that growth has slowed, but still, that’s a lot of posts that up until now had been limited from broader view, which X can now use to drive more conversations in the app.

Though that may also not be what members had in mind when joining these groups. The idea is that by joining a community, you’re stepping into a conversation with like-minded people, and the fact that X can now share these posts with all users, who can also comment on such, might not be a welcome shift.

X does note that community moderators can still hide replies from non-members if they choose, while you can also set a rule to stop non-members from posting (but not replying). So there are still options to limit this.

And again, maybe it’s a way to invite more discussion, and maybe that will be of more benefit overall.

Either way, X is moving ahead with the update, which is now in effect.