On March 20, Threads introduced breakthrough features for a more personalized experience under users’ control. These new features include topics in users’ bio, follower-only replies, quote posts, and video playback in aap. The social media platform expressed in its blog post
‘We want Threads to be your go-to app for sharing thoughts, ideas and unique takes. These new features give you even more control over what you see, the ways you express yourself and how you connect with others.’
‘Topics’ as Linchpin to Connect People
The newly launched feature will enable users to add up to ten topics in their bios. These topics will be public, allowing others to know users’ interests and favourite communities. This feature will enable visitors on a user’s profile to connect with people who share the same interest by leading them to direct conversations by simply tapping on a topic on the user’s profile. With AI integration, Threads will assist its user to see prompts while drafting a post, along with trending topics and related previous posts. The For You feed is also updated to make the trending topics more prominent.
Topics for Content Creators
Based on the internal data research of Threads, the social media platform finds that posts with tagged topics receive more views. Therefore, the topics section will be more useful for Threads Content Creators who will reach out more viewers through this feature.
Restricted Replies and Quote Posts
Threads also enhanced users’ control of their feed through these newly launched features. Now, users can choose to allow replies and quote posts only from their followers. This initiative is an upgrade of Threads’ previously launched feature, ‘Quote Control,’ through which Threads empowered its users to manage who can engage with their posts. Now with the newly launched features, Threads claim
‘You can also now personalize the order of your feeds. For instance, if you’d like to see a custom feed you’ve created when you first open the app, you can make that your default.’
Improved Media Player
Threads has simplified watching videos on its platform by launching new pause, play, and skip buttons. Most interestingly, users can now move forward and backward while watching a video through a pinned progress bar in the player. Threads is a major competitor of X with 320 million monthly active users. It was launched in January 2023 and has become a popular thought-sharing platform for influencers and creators since then.
