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Meta has recently updated Threads with new features, building up its capacity to contend further with X. Threads has more than 320 million monthly active users and is dishing out new updates, including topics, reply controls, and video playback in the app. The company also reported making political content suggestions more personalized to the user.
These features make the app more relevant to users and keep them engaged with the network’s content by the time X is no longer a competitor. Interestingly, networks like Bluesky now compete with Meta; Blue Sky reportedly has over 33 million users and a platform that’s inspiring rivals to Instagram.
Threads new features now allow users to add up to 10 interesting topics and display them on their social network profile. “When you tap on those topics, it will show you related posts, which makes it easier to engage with others on the social network who share your same interests,” the company affirms.
The company began testing the feature to add interest to users’ profiles on the earliest day of March 2025; however, the feature was being described as a “test,” with its broader launch scheduled for the last days of March 2025.
Meta contends that “at the point of composing a new post, you will be prompted to add a suggested trending topic, which you may decide to add or not, depending on how relevant the topic is to the post in making or other posts you’ve previously shared. The essence of these topic tag suggestions is to help posts reach an audience interested in that subject.”
Another Threads new feature focuses on a redesigned topic tag, which looks like a pill. It is located next to the posts on the For You feed. Users can quickly tap on the tag to see all the posts tagged with that particular topic, facilitating easy engagement for interested individuals.
Notwithstanding its lack of statistics to substantiate its claims, Meta maintains that posts with tagged topics “generally receive more views” than those without.
Meta also added another new feature that allows you to manage how people engage with your posts and the posts you interact with. This also includes a restriction to only allow your followers to reply to or quote a particular post.
The addition furthers other developments on the company’s “quote control,” launched in November 2024. This feature would allow you to limit quote posts to anyone, profiles you follow, or those you’ve mentioned only.
Similarly, in November 2024, among other Threads new features, there was an update to experiment with how users could pick a default feed that’s not algorithmic after rolling out custom feeds to compete with the social network Bluesky.
The new developments now allow users to shuffle the order of their custom feeds. Implyingly, you can make a custom feed the default that displays when you first open the app; interestingly, this is a feature users have been longing to have.
Meta also updated and improved video playback on Threads. This redesigned video player has easy-to-access pause/play and skip controls and a pinned progress bar to help you quickly scrub through the video.
Importantly, Meta was infused into Threads’ new features, phasing civic and political content back into Threads in a more personalized way.
In what appeared like a controversial decision, Threads stopped proactively recommending political content to users on Instagram and Threads in 2024 ahead of a critical U.S. presidential election. After the election wrapped, with President Trump in power, Meta announced it would begin bringing political content back on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also dismantled the company’s fact-checking program after the election, relying only on community moderation efforts in the future.
As a part of those efforts, the company said it would begin to add political content to users’ feeds when following its update to Threads’ new features, based on what Meta determines they want to see.
Meta says it will continue to listen to user feedback as it further develops Threads.
