Meta’s Threads App Gets New Social Features

While Meta is still working on a full-featured Threads web app, the Threads apps for iOS and Android are getting some love this week. Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri detailed yesterday a couple of new features that are now rolling out on mobile, such as the ability to share threads in Instagram direct messages.

Threads was created by the Instagram team, and the app currently requires an Instagram account for sign-up. Instagram has over 2 billion users, so this makes it easy for them to recreate their social graph on Threads. If relying on Instagram accounts helped Threads to gain over 100 million users in just five days, even though keeping these early enthusiasts engaged has now become quite a challenge.

The other new features now rolling out on Threads include the ability to see all the threads you’ve liked from your profile, as well as adding custom alt-text to images and videos. These are two features that Twitter/X already supports. However, there’s one more distinctive feature that’s coming to Threads, and that’s the ability to sort the accounts you follow on the platform.

In a separate Threads post, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that a new mention button is also coming to allow users to easily mention other people in their posts. Again, that’s another basic feature you can find on pretty much every social media platform today.

It’s just been a little more than a month since Meta launched its Twitter clone, and new features are coming at a regular pace. Meta previously announced that Threads would eventually support ActivityPub, a new decentralized social networking protocol that would allow Threads users to follow people on Mastodon and WordPress.