The live chat feature on Threads is about to receive a major update, with the introduction of co-hosts and better ways to share live chat conversations in the app. The Threads team unveiled the update to boost community engagement on the platform and make live conversations easier to manage.
The Co-Host Feature Explained
Until recently, live chats on Threads have only had a single host, the person who created the chat. This feature is about to change. Threads will now allow community champions to create and host live chats in their communities and each chat will be able to feature up to three co-hosts aside from the original host.
With co-hosts, chat creators can bring in extra people to help moderate the conversation and keep it on track, instead of managing everything alone. This will allow for better management of the discussion and make it more efficient for larger communities, where the original host might find it difficult to cope with the flow of messages.
This kind of collaboration could help a lot with larger or more active communities in the application. It’s quite challenging for one person to moderate a discussion with dozens or hundreds of participants, and spreading that responsibility across several people should make the job much easier. This also gives community champions more flexibility when setting up a live chat, since they can pick co-hosts based on what the chat needs, whether that’s someone who can keep the conversation going or someone who can draw quieter participants into the discussion.
Having co-hosts could also make live chats more sustainable for community champions as a whole. Moderating an active chat alone can take a lot of effort, especially if the discussion runs long or covers a fast-moving topic. Having some extra hands to split the job with makes it more realistic to host such chats on a regular basis instead of doing it occasionally.
Sharing Chats Beyond The Chat Itself
Apart from the introduction of co-hosts, Threads is bringing in another new feature, which is meant to increase visibility of live chats. It will be possible for participants of a live chat to post messages from it in their Threads feed.
The post will then appear in that user’s Threads feed as a chat link, giving other users a way to join the conversation directly from their feed. This gives the live chat more visibility, since people scrolling through their feed might come across the discussion there, something they wouldn’t have seen otherwise. It’s a simple way to turn a conversation that would otherwise stay confined to one community into something that reaches a much wider group of Threads users, and could attract even more participants.
This feature also gives the participants of the live chat an incentive to take more active part in the discussion, because they can post some of the messages from the conversation to their feed and get more exposure themselves. For those community champions, who want to expand their community, this kind of built-in sharing can become a good discovery tool for finding new members of the community.
Cleaning Up The Conversation
Threads is making the process of removing problematic messages easier for hosts with the new feature. Hosts can now delete a message with a long press, which is quicker and more direct than whatever process existed before.
This feature is a simple, yet practical addition for live chats and it is important for maintaining order in these chats. Real-time conversations can become pretty messy, so having a quick way of deleting messages and clearing the discussion of any unwanted content will help to maintain the atmosphere of this discussion pleasant for everyone.
With co-hosts being able to participate in the deletion process as well, it will be possible to keep pace with the fast-moving chats and make sure that all inappropriate content gets deleted quickly.
What’s Coming Next
Apart from introducing these features, the Threads team has mentioned several other things, which are currently under development for live chats. They are planning to implement pinned messages, which would allow to highlight certain messages and pin them at the top of the conversation.
They are also developing a feature of live translation, which would make it possible for users speaking other languages to participate in the discussion. These features demonstrate that Threads intends to make live chats a permanent part of the application.
How Live Chats Got Started On Threads
Threads first introduced live chats back in April as a means of enabling live engagement between communities in real time during the NBA playoffs. Since then, it has been promoted as a way of getting people to engage in real time around topics they care about as events unfold.
While live chats bear similarities to the live chats that were common on Twitter before, there are limits to how Threads has built its version. For starters, chats can only support 150 participants at any one time, while the host gets to choose the number of participants that will actively take part in the chat at any one time.
This arrangement is meant to ensure that live chats do not go crazy as well as help in curbing spam. It does, however, limit the number of people that get to post in a chat at any one time since they are limited by the decisions of the host.
Why This Matters For Threads
This comes at a time when Threads has been recording steady growth since the start of the year. As of mid-June, the platform has surpassed the 500 million user mark, a feat it has been able to achieve since its launch under Meta in 2023. Features like live chats, and now co-hosting and easier sharing, are aimed at keeping that growth going by getting people to engage with the platform instead of just scrolling through it.
Real-time engagement has long been one of the key strengths of the likes of X that was previously called Twitter because of how it was built around real-time interaction. Threads has been striving to create a niche for itself in this aspect, and live chats are a clear demonstration of this move. Offering co-hosting and easier ways to share live chats shows that Threads is investing further in real-time community conversation rather than treating it as a one-off feature.
For community champions on the app, it will make it easy for them to create an ongoing presence within a community around a certain topic or interest rather than relying on individual posts to engage. Live chats with shared responsibilities and sharing will turn out to be one of the best strategies that Threads has used to ensure consistent user participation on the platform rather than occasional ones.
Whether or not these changes will result in a livelier Threads will largely depend on how communities and hosts take advantage of co-hosting and chat sharing once it is rolled out broadly. But the direction is clear. Threads wants real-time conversation to become a bigger part of how people use the platform, and co-hosting and chat sharing are steps toward that goal.
FAQs
Q 1: What is the new co-host feature on Threads?
Threads has opened its live chats to allow up to three hosts to run and moderate the conversation, as opposed to a single host moderating the chat.
Q 2: Who can create and host a live chat on Threads?
Threads has opened this up to community champions allowing them to host live chats in their communities.
Q 3: How can users share a live chat outside of the chat itself?
Users can now post messages from live chat directly to their main feed where it turns out as a link taking them to the live chat.
Q 4: How do hosts moderate messages in a live chat?
Hosts can long press on messages to delete them in live chats.
Q 5: What other features is Threads planning to add to live chats?
Pinned messages and live translation are both in the works for the live chat feature, according to the Threads Team.
Q 6: When did Threads first launch live chats?
Threads introduced live chats in April as a way of boosting real-time engagement in communities.
Q 7: How many people can join a live chat on Threads?
Live chats can only support 150 participants while the number of those actively participating depends on what the host allows.
Q 8: Is this similar to the old Twitter chats?
Yes, the format is similar to what used to be popular on Twitter, though Threads has added participant and host restrictions to the live chat.
Q 9: Why is Threads investing in live chats right now?
Threads has been growing rapidly, crossing the 500 million mark and real-time engagement has been the strong point of the competition. Live chats are one way Threads has decided to expand on this aspect.
