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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. The company 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. The company targets outpacing X as a competitor. Interestingly, networks like Bluesky now compete with Meta. Bluesky 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. Users can also display them on their social network profile. “When you tap on those topics, it will show you related posts. This 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. The company describes it 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, the app will prompt you to add a suggested trending topic. You can now decide to add or not, depending on the relevance of the topic 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. Its  designers place the icon 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. The development will facilitate easy engagement for interested individuals.

Notwithstanding its lack of statistics to substantiate its claims, Meta maintains that posts with tagged topics usually get more attention than those without.

Meta also added another new feature that allows you to manage how people engage with your posts. This also includes the posts you interact with. It’s 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. This feature excludes algorithmic posts 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. It implies that you can make a custom feed the default and its interface will display when you open the app. This is a feature that 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. It also has 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. The company did this ahead of the crucial U.S. presidential election. After the election wrapped, with President Trump in power, Meta announced it would begin bringing political content back on its social media.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also dismantled the company’s fact-checking program after the election. He predicated the company’s actions 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. The company will apply this in 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.

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