Meta Adds US Trending Topics to Threads and Teases Fediverse Sharing

Meta has started rolling out trending topics to all Thread users in the US. Users of the Twitter/X-like app can finally see what are the most engaging topics, and this will likely help Threads to become a more popular destination for discovering what’s going on around the world.

Mark Zuckerberg announced last month on Threads that trending topics would roll out to more countries and languages “once we get it tuned up.” The app, which is being developed by the Instagram team, is also working on Fediverse support, which will allow users to cross-post Threads updates on Mastodon and other decentralized platforms that joined the Fediverse.

At the FediForum yesterday (via The Verge), Meta demoed for the first time how “Fediverse sharing” will work on Threads. When the feature is enabled on a public Threads profile, new posts can be shared across different platforms like Mastodon.

As of today, Fediverse sharing on Threads only lets users see the likes they received on their posts on other platforms, but replies are not visible. Meta is currently working to change that. Moreover, the team also wanted to warn Fediverse enthusiasts that enabling Fediverse sharing comes with a notable downside: Posts that are deleted on Threads may not be deleted on other platforms.

“I think this is a downside of the protocol that we use today, but I think it’s important to let people know that if you post something and another server grabs a copy, we can’t necessarily enforce it,” explained Peter Cottle, engineer at Instagram.

Earlier this month, the Threads team also announced that a public API would be released in June. This will eventually allow developers and brands to manage their presence on Threads via other apps, and this is another thing the Twitter clone will need to really take off.