I'm not sure that X Communities are going to ever be this major element, or real driver of significant engagement in the app.

But X is taking Communities interaction and making it easier to find, join in on, and soon, to check-in on as you scroll through the app.

The above announcement states that X is working on a new option which would allow you to pin a community to your timeline, apparently similar to how you can currently pin lists as swipeable feed options.

That would make it easier to switch across and check out the latest discussions within each community that you're a part of, while X is also looking to add keyword search in Communities as well, so you can get to the key topics that are of most interest.

Which will be helpful, though as mentioned, Communities, so far, hasn't seen a pile of engagement, and without a massive shift in focus, it's hard to see this changing anytime soon.

Twitter initially launched Communities back in 2021, with the stated intent to "connect with people who Tweet like you.".

Some conversations aren't for everyone, only the people who actually want to talk about the thing you want to talk about. When you join a Community, you can Tweet directly to that group instead of to all your followers. Only members in the same Community are able to reply and join the conversation so it stays intimate and relevant.

While the greater trend is towards more enclosed discussion, Communities is a natural fit, but the more open nature of X, as a "global town square," goes directly against the Communities ethos, and it's that mismatch that seems to have limited Communities take-up thus far.

Still, X CTO Elon Musk might have hope for that, and since he has the engagement data, Communities may actually be far more popular than it seems.

Back in May, Musk announced that Circles, another enclosed group chat feature, would be deprecated in favor of improved features for DM chats and Communities, both of which show significantly more promise. The X team has since began testing new entry questions for community membership, in order to filter out spammers, while it’s also now showing posts from communities that you’ve joined in the ‘For You’ feed to increase awareness and engagement.
As it evolves, Communities could still become a bigger engagement surface in the app, and its future hinges on whether X users want to interact with each other in more focused, private groups, or they want to share with all to better their reach and engagement.

That probably varies by group, and there are likely some highly engaged Communities in the app, and maybe, that’s enough incentive to keep X developing its Communities tools.

Whatever the reason, you’ll soon have more Community discovery tools, which could enhance your topical engagement options in the app.