Meta Updates Threads on iOS with a Follows Tab, More

Say what you will about Threads, but the one thing fans and detractors can agree on is that it launched in an incomplete state. And so it is perhaps not surprising that Meta is racing to address the feedback and add the features this service needs to be truly competitive.

Starting with the iOS version of the app, apparently.

“New Threads app on iOS update dropped today,” Meta’s Cameron Roth wrote on Threads today. “Check out what we’ve been hard at work cooking up. You may need to restart your app to see some of these or otherwise wait until the end of the day. We use a system of server-delivered flags which can take a while to fully release.”

Here’s what’s new, in Roth’s words:

• Translations
• Follows tab on activity feed
• Subscribe to unfollowed users
• Activity feed scrolling + loading improvements
• Following + on thread replies page
• Tappable reposter labels
• Open the [Instagram] followers list
• A few small crash fixes. we’re now at 0.02%
• More binary size cuts
• A handful of other small bugs

No word on when the Android version of the app will get similar updates.

As you probably know, Meta launched Threads, its Twitter alternative, less than two weeks ago, and rocketed to 70 million sign-ups in two days and then 100 million sign-ups after five days. I don’t believe there have been any sign-up updates since then, so I’m guessing that’s slowed. And of course there are questions about the actual size of the user base and what that will look like over time. But Threads is still the biggest and most credible challenger to Twitter, by far, and it’s likely only a matter of time before it surpasses Twitter’s user base.