Threads, Meta’s alternative to Twitter, just celebrated its first birthday. Since launching on July 5 last year, the social network has reached 175 million monthly active users—a notable achievement. However, after a year, Threads is trying to find its voice by not being as newsy as Twitter/X and not as open as Mastodon or Bluesky—at least for now.
Feature Development and User Feedback
Over the last year, the Threads team has shipped features rapidly and gathered feedback on the social network directly through its users. After the launch, Threads gained support for multiple profiles, a web app, a TweetDeck-like interface on the desktop, trending topics in the U.S., custom controls for posts, and quote replies.
Integration with the Fediverse
The company has also made some progress in integrating with the Fediverse. Users can connect their accounts to the ActivityPub protocol and share their posts with the fediverse. They can also look at likes and replies from the wider Fediverse. However, they can’t follow people from other servers just yet.
(Threads)Learning from Other Social Networks
Following Topics
Bluesky has done great with custom feeds and helping people discover different content. Custom feeds are programmatic feeds that aim to pull posts related to one topic without being limited to one tag.
Threads implemented tags last year, but users often share posts with different tags for an event or trend. For example, WWDC could be tagged as WWDC, WWDC 2024, WWDC 24, or Apple Event. There is no way to combine these searches for relevant and recent posts. A provision for this in the API or a custom list implementation would be a great addition.
API Availability
Last month, Threads made its API widely available to developers. The API enables toolmakers to post user content and display their posts within an app. Meta described the Threads API as allowing businesses to create and publish content on a person’s behalf on Threads and display those posts within an app solely to the person who made it.
This doesn’t allow developers to create third-party apps to consume Threads. Social networks have become stingy about user data over the last few years, shutting down alternative experiences that could help different users. Threads’ rivals like Bluesky and Mastodon have fostered an ecosystem where third-party developers can make their clients. It’s unclear if users can pick other Mastodon clients to experience Threads when Threads fully integrates with the fediverse. It would be good to be assured that Threads is open to third-party apps.
Separating Threads and Instagram
Thread built much of its user base through its Instagram integration. With more than 175 million active users, the company can afford to lose its ties with Instagram. Initially, a Threads profile was tied to a user’s Instagram account, so you couldn’t delete your Threads profile without deleting your Instagram account. The company later released an update for users to deactivate or delete one account.
However, you still can’t create a separate profile from an Instagram account. Plus, you can only send direct messages to people if you go to Instagram.
There is hope in this area, though. In an interview with Platformer’s Casey Newton, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said the company is considering moving in this direction.
“I hope that Thread gets more independent over time. It’s still deeply integrated with Instagram — you can sign in with the same account, you can automatically follow the same accounts, and we show Threads content on Instagram. But over time, I want it to be more and more independent. We’re working on things like Threads-only accounts and data separation,” Mosseri told Platformer.
News and Politics
Thread and Mosseri have argued that they are not actively promoting or amplifying news and political content on the platform. Despite that, political topics occasionally surface in places like trending topics. These topics are now concentrated on U.S. politics, but as Threads expands to other regions, political content will inevitably surface. The company should hone the product to handle extremities without suppressing news.
X’s Community Notes program is imperfect and often makes mistakes or is prone to bias. However, it sometimes succeeds in providing helpful context. Regarding news, Mastodon recently rolled out a feature to show bylines linked with the writer’s account on the social network.
The “For You” Algorithm
No social network has a perfect algorithm. Video platforms like TikTok might have moved the needle in a positive direction in terms of serving exciting posts.
In comparison, Threads’ “For You” feed sometimes appears bizarre. Several people have written about strange posts on their feeds that seem out of interest.
More recently, I have seen posts about people asking, “Where are you from?” and talking about how single life or dating is hard. I’m unsure what I did to trigger this, but Threads needs to make the “For You” algorithm more palatable when showing random posts on the timeline.
Better Local Content
To surface local content, Threads doesn’t have to look far beyond Instagram, which has developed partnership teams in various countries. Before Elon Musk took over, Twitter had partnership teams in multiple regions focusing on surfacing relevant content.
Thread rolled out live scores for NBA, MLS, and Euro 2024. However, it missed the opportunity to engage cricket fans with live scores during the T20 World Cup last month. Earlier today, the company published a blog post saying, “India is one of the most active countries on Threads globally.”
SUMMARY (Threads)
While there are areas for improvement, given the feature release cadence, we might see some of these areas addressed sooner rather than later. Threads has acted friendly with Mastodon and hasn’t cared about Bluesky. But if we are to believe Mosseri, the ultimate aim is to beat Twitter.
