After 15 years, Twitter is getting devoted options for teams. The firm is now beginning to check Communities, “a more intimate space for conversations” on the platform.

Communities, which the corporate first teased again in February, are type of like Twitter’s model of a subreddit or a public-facing group on Facebook. Communities are devoted to particular matters, and members can put up tweets to a devoted group timeline. Each group has its personal moderators who set guidelines for the group, and customers should be invited by an present member or moderator to take part.

The function is supposed to handle what’s been a long-running subject for the platform: that it may be extremely troublesome for brand spanking new customers to wade via the noise and discover the nook of Twitter that speaks to their pursuits. The firm has tried to handle this with Topics, which injects tweets into your timeline based mostly in your pursuits, however Communities takes the concept a step additional.

Twitter notes that a few of its first Communities will deal with fashionable matters like skincare, astrology, sneakers and canines, however that over time it expects the teams to mirror the extra “niche discussions” that occur on the platform. For now, Twitter is beginning with only a handful of Communities, although moderators and members are capable of invite anybody to affix. The firm says it plans to open up the function for extra customers to create Communities within the “coming months.”

Notably, Twitter appears to be attempting to keep away from among the points which have plagued Facebook’s Groups. All Communities are publicly accessible and viewable by anybody on the platform —there’s no such factor as a non-public or “secret” Community — although solely members can take part within the dialogue immediately. Like Reddit and Facebook, Twitter can even depend on admins and moderators to steer the day-to-day conversations and preserve members in verify. The firm can be engaged on new reporting and detection options to weed out “potentially problematic” teams which will spring up.

Though the corporate is asking the function a check, Twitter appears to be fairly critical about its potential. Communities is getting its personal tab within the middle of Twitter’s app, between discover and notifications, which suggests the corporate plans for Communities to be a distinguished function of its platform for the long run.