Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Friday that his company's X competitor, Threads, is testing custom feeds for specific topics and profiles to help users find communities and conversations that interest them. announced that it would start. The news follows the rapid growth of social networking startup and X rival Bluesky. Bluesky prioritizes tools that allow users to build their own algorithms and feeds, create lists, set their own moderation rules, and more.
After the US presidential election, X gained more right-wing attention, with X's owner Elon Musk heavily campaigning for Trump using the platform formerly known as Twitter. Recruitment is accelerating. As a result, many left-wing users have migrated to Bluesky, an alternative to X, which added about 700,000 new users in a week and now has 1 million new signups in just 24 hours. has occurred.
Perhaps wary of Bluesky's potential momentum, Threads aims to meet user demands for further personalization and customization.
Threads forces a “For You” algorithmic feed on users by default, but a new feature allows users to create their own feed and use it to follow specific individuals or topics.
To create a custom feed, you first need to search for a topic and tap it to see the latest posts. From there, tap the three dots icon next to your search term and select the “Create new feed” option. You can also add a specific user profile to your feed by visiting the user's profile, tapping the three dots icon above their profile picture, then tapping to add it to one of your feeds.
According to Threads, the company has just started testing this feature, so not all Threads users have access to custom feeds at this time.
If you're in a test group, you can pull down your home screen to see your custom feed. This will show your existing Following and For You feeds, as well as any other custom feeds you've created. Switch them.
Custom feeds are the most frequently requested request from the threading community, but this method hides them to some extent in the user interface. People were already complaining that Threads' “For You” feed on election night was showing outdated content instead of real-time news, and they didn't even seem to realize that the feed to follow was an option. . This makes finding and switching between different feeds even more difficult, which indicates that Threads' current user interface makes it possible.
It remains to be seen whether Threads' adoption of custom feeds will help stem the influx of new users to Bluesky.
Meta's Threads remains X's biggest competitor, with over 275 million monthly active users and saw over 15 million sign-ups in November alone.