Meta is promising “long-overdue improvements” to its X competitor, Threads, including more precise search features and expanded trending topics.
First, users will be able to search for posts within a specific date range or from a single account — similar to what X’s search allows. Threads is also testing a new trending page in the US that includes additional topics to follow as well as AI-generated summaries of what other users are talking about.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri, who led the launch of Threads, wrote in a post that the tests begin today.
This week has been full of updates on Threads, which is facing increased competition from Bluesky, the decentralized text-based platform that people have been flocking to in recent weeks. Earlier this week, Threads rolled out a custom feeds option that allows users to pin multiple curated feeds on the homepage. Users can create custom feeds for certain topics or accounts, giving them more flexibility beyond the algorithmic recommendations feed or the reverse chronological following feed. The feature has existed for a while on Bluesky, and Meta announced and rolled out its own copycat version in just a few days.
A long-running complaint about Threads is that the default home feed is filled with irrelevant, at times annoying content from accounts users don’t follow (Bluesky’s default feed is the opposite). Just yesterday, Mosseri said Meta was tweaking the Threads algorithm to prioritize posts from people you do follow, a significant change to how the platform ranks content. There are still questions about whether this change would actually make Threads feel more timely — though it might be many times larger than Bluesky, logging on and seeing posts from two days ago makes Threads feel dead.
Bluesky has seen explosive growth over the past couple weeks: it’s up to 20 million users, and this week it’s added a million new users each day. It’s still small peanuts compared to Threads’ user base, but it’s clearly doing something right — and maybe giving Meta a reason to worry.