Meta’s social community Threads, an X competitor with greater than 320 million month-to-month energetic customers, is now rolling out new options associated to subjects, reply controls, and video playback within the app, amongst different issues. It’s additionally making political content material recommendations extra customized to the person, the corporate says.
Mixed, the options purpose to make the app extra related to customers and maintain them engaged with the community’s content material, at a time when X is now not the one competitor Threads faces. At the moment, Meta faces the rise of other networks like Bluesky, which now has over 33 million customers and a platform that’s inspiring rivals to Instagram, as effectively.
To assist Threads customers higher join, customers will now have the ability to add as much as 10 subjects they’re involved in to their profile on the social community. Tapping on these subjects will then present you associated posts, which makes it simpler to have interaction with others on the social community who share your identical pursuits.
The corporate started testing the characteristic so as to add curiosity to profiles earlier this month, TechCrunch reported. The characteristic continues to be being described as a “test” with its broader launch at this time.
When composing a brand new put up, customers will now see prompts so as to add a recommended trending subject to your put up, if related, or a subject associated to different posts you’ve beforehand shared. These subject tag recommendations purpose to assist posts attain an viewers who’s additionally involved in that topic, Meta explains.
Threads can also be introducing a redesigned subject tag, which seems to be like a capsule and is discovered subsequent to the posts on the For You feed. Customers will have the ability to shortly faucet on the tag to see all of the posts tagged with that specific subject.
Meta claims posts with tagged subjects “generally receive more views” than these with out, however didn’t share any particular knowledge to again up that assertion.
One other new characteristic lets you handle how folks work together together with your posts and the posts you see. Now, you’ll have the ability to enable solely your followers to answer to or quote a selected put up.
The addition builds on the quote management Threads launched again in November 2024 that permits you to restrict quote posts to anybody, profiles you observe, or these you’ve talked about solely.
Additionally in November, Threads started to experiment with permitting customers to decide a default feed that’s not the algorithmic feed after rolling out customized feeds to compete with the social community Bluesky.
Now, Threads will enable customers to shuffle the order of their customized feeds. Meaning you may even make a customized feed the default that shows once you first open the app — a characteristic customers have been asking for.
One other replace improves video playback on Threads. Together with the opposite adjustments, Meta is launching a redesigned video participant that has easy-to-access pause/play and skip controls together with a pinned progress bar to simply scrub via the video.
Notably, Meta additionally mentioned that it’s began phasing again civic and political content material into the Threads in a extra customized means.
The corporate controversially determined in 2024 to cease proactively recommending political content material to customers on Instagram and Threads, forward of a crucial U.S. presidential election. After the election wrapped, with President Trump in energy, Meta introduced it might then start to part again in political content material on Fb, Instagram and Threads.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg additionally dismantled the corporate’s fact-checking program after the election, selecting to rely solely on group moderation efforts going ahead.
As part of these efforts, the corporate mentioned it might start to re-add political content material to customers’ feeds, based mostly on what Meta determines they need to see. In different phrases, it goals to re-create the echo chamber the place the person’s worldview is bolstered with out publicity to the opposite aspect.
Meta says it’s going to proceed to take heed to person suggestions because it additional develops Threads.
Extra reporting: Sarah Perez
