Meta is rapidly evolving its Twitter-like Threads app, and in an effort to pick up as much of the spillover from X as possible, Meta is moving closer to adding a variety of highly requested features that could bring it to parity with X. It seems there is. An app owned by Elon Musk, or maybe even better.
First, Threads will soon have a new “Trending Topics” element. This makes it easy for users to keep up with the latest discussions within the app.
![Trending topics in threads](https://www.socialmediatoday.com/imgproxy/Zzmro7nM-wGwVbtahUa847_WJzT4T8jCXUyM8rZf_l4/g:ce/rs:fill:330:363:0/bG9jYWw6Ly8vZGl2ZWltYWdlL3RocmVhZHNfdHJlbmRpbmcucG5n.jpg)
As you can see in this example posted by app developer Willian Max (who was able to grab a screenshot via his meta developer account), the new trending list includes all the top conversations happening in threads at any given time. It shows. Users will be able to tap on any topic to see what people are saying, similar to X.
This could be a big step in bringing Threads closer to the X experience. Because for now, X is still the best place for real-time news discussions. But perhaps Threads could become a greater source of information if it focused more on the important topics of the moment, even if it didn’t want to get too involved in news and politics per se.
However, IG Director Adam Mosseri also recently clarified his position on this.
That’s true, as Meta repeatedly added incentives to news publishers only to rescind them a year or so later, leaving newsrooms in dire straits. Mosseri said Threads is trying to be more deliberate about things like that, rather than reorienting its newsroom to focus on video, for example, and then changing it again in the future.
Threads is also considering adding more post creation elements, such as audio posts, GIFs, and in-stream voting.
![Thread composer updates](https://www.socialmediatoday.com/imgproxy/xenoPobDcUzvleM-9yvOiX6IMA-5sJTxSUCUYY0Np3g/g:ce/rs:fill:320:433:0/bG9jYWw6Ly8vZGl2ZWltYWdlL3RocmVhZHNfdHJlbmRpbmcyLnBuZw.jpg)
As you can see in this screenshot shared by Chris Messina, Threads users will soon have more options built into the Thread composer, giving them additional ways to participate and interact.
Threads is also testing post-post editing within a time limit, as well as new ways to promote your Threads activity both on your Instagram profile and in the app.
It’s still too early to tell whether Threads is here to stay and become a more important player in the social media space. But recent changes at Company X, including a revamped link preview, have certainly made more people pay attention to Threads, especially as journalists and news organizations are now starting to look at them based on the promotional potential of their content. We are considering options.
This is the point of X’s vulnerability.
As confirmed by X staff, 80% of X users never postThis means that of X’s 253 million daily active users, only 50 million have ever posted anything, a relatively small portion of the platform’s user base.
That in itself is probably not unusual, and most apps rely on a small group of highly active users to increase their activity levels. However, X also recently admitted that of the 500 million posts he sees each day, only 100 million are original updates, and the rest are replies to those updates or reposts or quotes. This means that for an active posting user of X, on average he only shares 2 original updates per day.
Of course, some people post far more than that. This means that the majority of the 50 million posters, even if he only posts one update every 24 hours.
And I suspect that a significant portion of this activity actually comes from news organizations, journalists, and publishers, sharing links to their latest posts and sparking further discussion within the app. is guessing.
If these media players (most of whom aren’t too happy about X’s link preview updates) stop posting to X and instead shift their focus to other apps, that would be a huge blow to the app. It will be.
At the same time, Elon continues to attack “mainstream” media on an almost daily basis within the app, accusing journalists and publications of lying, misleading, representing the government, and worse. ing.
If there’s anything that could take more activity away from X, this is probably it. Elon may have underestimated the importance of major publications to the platform and the value they bring to the X ecosystem.
The media is still entangled with X, but we can see it unraveling. This appears to be leaving the door a little open for the thread, as Elon is actively trying to keep many publications away.
Next, the Threads team needs to understand its feature set in order to make it widely available and welcome further discussion.