X to shut Communities on May 30 amid spam concerns, rolls out Grok-powered Custom Timelines

The social media platform X has announced that it will discontinue its Communities feature on May 30, citing concerns over low engagement and rampant spam. Introduced in 2021 as a means for users to connect with shared interests, Communities will be replaced by an innovative feature called Custom Timelines. Nikita Bier, the head of product, highlighted that while Communities were designed with great potential, they attracted less than 0.4% of the user base yet accounted for a staggering 80% of spam reports, including financial scams and malware. This discrepancy led to significant resource allocation from the team, impacting the overall performance of the platform. The new Custom Timelines, powered by Grok, are currently available for Premium users on iOS. They allow users to curate personalized feeds based on over 75 topics, including popular subjects like Formula 1, K-pop, cryptocurrency, and biotech. Unlike traditional keyword filtering, Grok analyzes and categorizes posts to enhance the relevance of each topic feed, promoting deeper user engagement. Bier characterized this rollout as a monumental shift for X, enabling users to pin up to 10 topics, rearrange their feeds, and toggle between different subjects directly from the home tab. Additionally, a Snooze Topics feature has been introduced, allowing users to temporarily mute categories like politics or sports for a 24-hour period. Despite this upgrade, the decision to phase out Communities has faced backlash from creators, prompting X to extend the migration deadline from May 6 to May 30. In response to user feedback, the platform has also increased the group chat limit from 350 to a planned 1,000 members. Furthermore, the launch of Custom Timelines has opened up new advertising opportunities, with every second slot in the feeds designated for ads. As X forges ahead, it remains to be seen how these new timelines will be embraced by users, given the distinct roles of curated feeds and group chats.