Threads doesn’t want people to post about divisive politics and ruin the more positive atmosphere in the app, but it’s slowly adding more topical and trending engagement options while emphasizing the real-time nature of a Twitter-like experience.
First, Threads will roll out new blue labels above posts related to trending topics within the app, making it easier for users to tap to link into the broader, evolving conversation.
As you can see in this example posted by Threads chief Adam Mosseri, tapping on a linked topic brings up a search list for that term that you can sort by “Recent” to get the latest updates.
It’s an easy way to tap into trends, and with the availability of the “Recent” filter in Threads, it’s another way to leverage real-time chat and get more people talking in the app.
And that will probably be better than Threads’ current trending topics list, which often misses key talking points and is likely to remain that way for the next few months, at least in the U.S., due to Threads’ aversion to politics.
However, this too has been upgraded, with some users now seeing new “Now” alerts for big ongoing debates.
Highlighting an important topic of the moment seems like an easy way to drive engagement and awareness, and more people will tap into that. But then again, if the main news of the day is, say, Joe Biden dropping out of the election, Threads still doesn’t want to get involved with that.
This is problematic for an app that focuses on real-time engagement, and poses a more unique challenge for Threads in particular, as opposed to Meta’s other apps.
Both Facebook and Instagram have been successful in deprioritizing politics and switching to pointless video content that engages users as they scroll, thanks to Meta’s broader understanding of their users’ interests. And on these apps, users are less interested in political news because they come to these apps for other things. But on Threads, which is seen by many users as an alternative to Twitter, whether Meta likes it or not, users come to it to find out what’s happening at any given moment, to find out about major news as it breaks, and to find out what people are saying about it in real time.
And that definitely includes politics.
That said, Meta’s definition of political content is also problematic, as it necessarily branches out into a variety of grey areas that may or may not be political in nature based on matching keywords to profiles.
Threads head Adam Mosseri said most of the measures taken to restrict political content are taken at the account level because keyword matching is likely to produce too many false positives, but that can still result in restricting interesting and engaging commenters. Only 20% of Twitter/X users actually postPerhaps Threads can’t afford to lose a single voice driving engagement.
Also, every time a big news story breaks, it can unintentionally drive traffic to X.
Many users have switched to Threads as an alternative for real-time engagement, but when something happens, Threads’ political restrictions make it difficult to follow within the app, so many have gone back to X for updates, an audience that Threads can certainly maintain.
Mosseri and co. know this and have clearly considered the implications and benefits, but then again, it seems to me like Meta is integrating lessons learned from Facebook and IG into an entirely different app.
The addition of these new detection features, as well as this new search filter option being tested, could signal a step change in this regard.
Being able to search posts by date helps you focus on specific discussions and trends, increasing engagement within the app.
But political constraints will likely remain a constraint for apps that need to constantly reflect global trends.
While Threads is still growing (Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said today that Threads is approaching 200 million monthly users), it’s still less than half the size of X.
I think there’s at least one big reason why it remains a secondary focus for many of its potential most active users.
