• by Colin Kirkland , March 7, 2025

As Discord continues to see steady growth, Instagram is looking to onboard aspects of the communication platform’s server format into its app with an upcoming “Community Chat” feature that would allow Instagram users to organize groups of up to 250 people.

According to a screenshot from developer Alessandro Paluzzi, the Meta-owned platform’s Discord-like feature is currently in testing. 

“Give your community an exclusive place to chat,” reads the screenshot.

Based on Paluzzi’s post, Community Chat will allow individual users to form chats around specific topics and interests, while providing them with control over who can join. 

Compared to Instagram’s “Broadcast Channels” feature, which allows creators to grab the attention of their follower base by blasting out messages, Community Chats is more intimate. Like Discord, the feature seems to be designed around an effort to enable groups of people to bond more fully over their interests in a like-minded community -- like Discord. 

“Admins can remove messages and members to keep the channel safe,” the screenshot reads. “We also review Community Chat against our Community Standards.”

Over the past decade, Discord has pushed the concept of online micro-communities into the larger social media landscape, influencing Meta to implement various community-focused features across its family of apps, like WhatsApp, Facebook and Messenger. 

It is too soon to tell how ads will run in Meta’s Community Chat, but it could provide brands with the ability to target groups of users in a new way with regard to a niche topic or interest. 

With over 200 million active users, Discord is reportedly in early talks with banks about a public listing.