On Tuesday, Meta announced that Threads now has over 500 million monthly active users. While there’s no Threads Plus subscription yet, Meta is announcing a trio of new features aimed at improving your feed and building communities on the platform. As reported by TechCrunch, you’ll be able to influence what you see on your feed (there’s no toggle to disable the bots, but you can get ahead of them), and how you connect with groups using the new Communities feature. Plus, Live Chats is getting an expanded release.
Influence your feed using Dear Algo, but privately
Credit: Meta
While Threads has offered users a way to customize their algorithms, it was far from ideal. “Dear Algo” forced users to make public posts asking Threads’ algorithm to make adjustments. Posts would say things like “Dear Algo, show me more NBA and tech content.” It worked, but it was a bit embarrassing. Luckily, going forward, Dear Algo is going private.
The updated feature, now called “Your Algo,” lets you make those same adjustments (privately or publicly) from a new hub in the sidebar—you just need to define the timeframe (between one, three, or seven days). Unfortunately, there’s currently no way to make Your Algo requests permanent, but it’s at least something. The feature is rolling out today in the U.S., Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.
Threads’ “Communities” feature is finally out of beta
Credit: Meta
The Communities feature that Meta launched last year is exiting beta. It’s a gradual rollout, though, so it will take some time to make its way across the globe. On Threads, Communities are an evolution of tags and topics. What started out as 200 topics is now expanding to any topic across the globe. They have their own spaces in the Threads app, with flairs, tags, and “champions” (members who frequently engage with a specific Threads community).
Along with the public release, Meta is adding a new Communities Hub to the left sidebar. Here, you can view and switch between all the communities that you’re a part of. Each community will have its own icons and visual identity, making it easier to spot community posts across Threads. Native-language tags are also coming to communities across Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.
Live chats are coming to more communities
Credit: Meta
The Live Chat feature is yet another Meta attempt at stealing users from X. The Live Chat feature encourages real-time conversation around events. You can tag events, comment on them, and follow along with the Live tag. With the FIFA World Cup already underway, Meta is planning to roll out this feature to all communities by July.
