Threads announced co-hosts for its live chat feature, as well as more ways to share live chat discussions. The updates are designed to promote more topical and community engagement.
First, Threads will enable all community champions to create and host chats within communities, and live chats will support up to three co-hosts.
As shown in these example images, a live chat creator will now be able to invite co-hosts, who can then provide more assistance in managing live discussions within the community.
That could ensure greater acknowledgement and participation, while also inviting more community participation through expanded chats.
In order to help promote these discussions, Threads will also let chat participants post messages from a live chat directly to their feed.
This will display those posts as a chat link, which will help to expand awareness of the live discussion, and ideally get more people involved.
Threads also improved the deletion process in live chats. Hosts can now long press to delete messages, which helps to keep things civil and welcoming.
The Threads team said it’s also working on pinned messages and live translation within chats, which offers more options for interaction and participation from community members.
Threads launched its live chat functionality in April, providing another way for Threads users to drive engagement within communities and promote topical discussions among interested members.
The feature is somewhat like the Twitter chats of old, though Threads chats are limited to 150 participants, and only a certain number of people can contribute to the live discussion, at the discretion of the host.
That could make it feel a little less interactive, but at the same time, Threads is keen to limit potential spam in order to keep the live discussion on track.
These new additions will help with overall chat management and engagement. They should also raise awareness of these discussions as they happen.
Real time engagement is key to making Threads a more lively space for online chatter, and it’s an area that X has long dominated. But broader take-up of live chats could potentially expand Threads’ role on this front.
