Jess Weatherbed is a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.

Meta is adding group chats to Threads, allowing users to message multiple friends in shared conversations instead of sending separate DMs. Threads users can create a group chat by starting a new message and adding up to 50 people who follow their Threads account. The group chat name can be customized to make it easier to identify by topic or participants, similar to how group messages function on Facebook Messenger.

Group chat support is currently rolling out globally, excluding the UK and Australia, with Meta spokesperson Alec Booker telling The Verge that the company is working to expand messaging to these regions “as quickly as possible.” Future updates will include improved inbox management tools and enabling Threads users to invite people to group chats by sharing a link, instead of individually adding them to the conversation.

The group messaging launch coincides with Threads expanding messaging features to the EU “over the next few days,” including support for both individual DMs and group chats.

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• Jess Weatherbed