Threads, Meta's Twitter alternative, has just celebrated its first anniversary. Since its launch on July 5 last year, the social network has hit 175 million monthly active users, a remarkable achievement. But a year later, Threads is still finding its own voice, not as newsworthy as Twitter/X, and not as open as Mastodon or Bluesky. At least for now.
Over the past year, the Threads team has been rapidly releasing features and soliciting feedback directly from the social network's users. Since launch, Threads has gained support for multiple profiles, a web app, a Tweetdeck-like interface on desktop, trending topics in the US, custom controls for muting and quote replies, and more.
The company has also made some progress on integrating with Fediverse. Users can connect their accounts to the ActivityPub protocol. They can then share their posts with the Fediverse. They can also see likes and replies from the wider Fediverse. However, they cannot currently follow users on other servers.
But there's a lot Meta can learn from other social networks.
Topics you're following
Bluesky does a great job with custom feeds to help people discover a variety of content. Custom feeds are programmatic feeds that aim to grab posts related to one topic without being limited to one tag.
Threads implemented tags last year, but sometimes users share posts with different tags for events or trends: WWDC, WWDC 2024, WWDC 24, Apple events? You can save search terms to get recent related posts, but there is no way to combine them. Some provision for this in the API, or even a custom list implementation, would be a great addition.
Last month, Threads opened up its API to developers, allowing toolmakers to post content for users and display their own posts within the app.
“The Threads API allows businesses to create and publish content on Threads on behalf of individuals, making those posts visible only to the creator in the app,” Meta wrote in a description of the Threads API.
This prevents developers from creating third-party apps that take advantage of Threads. I wrote earlier this year that the social network has become more reluctant with user data over the past few years, and in the process, it has halted the development of alternative experiences that serve different demographics.
Threads competitors Bluesky and Mastodon have fostered ecosystems that allow third-party developers to create their own clients. It's unclear whether users will be able to choose other Mastodon clients to experience Threads once Threads is fully integrated with Fediverse. Hopefully, this will provide some confirmation that Threads is open to allowing third-party apps.
Separate threads and Instagram
Threads built a large user base through its integration with Instagram. However, with over 175 million active users, the company doesn't mind losing its connection to Instagram. Initially, Threads profiles were fully tied to Instagram accounts, which meant it was impossible to delete the profile without deleting the Instagram account. However, the company later released an update that allowed users to deactivate or delete one account.
You can't yet create a profile separate from your Instagram account, and there's no way to DM someone unless you have access to their Instagram.
But there's hope on this front: In an interview with Platformer's Casey Newton, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said the company is considering moving in this direction.
“We expect Threads to become 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 you can see Threads content on Instagram — but over time we want it to become more independent — we're working on things like a dedicated Threads account and data separation,” Mosseri told Platformer.
News and Politics
Threads and Mosseri have taken a stance that they don't actively promote or amplify news or political content on the platform. Nevertheless, political topics do pop up from time to time in places like trending topics. Currently, these topics are focused on U.S. politics, but as it rolls out to other regions, political content could dominate the social network. And the company will need to hone its product in a way that allows it to handle extreme situations without stifling news.
X's Community Notes program isn't perfect and often makes mistakes or is biased, but it does manage to provide useful context at times. On the news side, Mastodon recently introduced the ability to display signatures linked to the poster's account on the social network.
“For You” Algorithm
We’ll admit it: no social network has a perfect algorithm. Video platforms like TikTok may have moved the situation forward in terms of providing interesting posts.
In comparison, Threads' “For You” feed can seem odd, with several people writing that their feed is filled with strange posts that seem outside of their scope of interest.
Lately, I've been seeing a lot of posts asking “Where are you from?” and talking about the difficulties of single life and dating. I don't know what triggered this, but Threads needs to work on making their “For You” algorithm more tolerant when it comes to showing random posts on your timeline.
Better local content
To surface local content, Threads need not look any further than Instagram, which has partnership teams in different countries. Before Elon Musk took over, Twitter also had partnership teams in different regions that focused on surface relevant content.
Threads has published live scores from the NBA, MLS and even Euro 2024, but missed the opportunity to engage cricket fans with live scores during last month's T20 World Cup. “India is one of the most active countries in the world using Threads,” the company said in a blog post today.
There's room for improvement, but given the pace of feature releases, some of these areas may be addressed sooner than later — Threads is on friendly terms with Mastodon and doesn't really care about Bluesky — but if Mosseri is to be believed, the ultimate goal is to beat Twitter.