Big Changes Are Coming to Mark Zuckerberg's Threads -- Here's Why That's Good News

The 'Twitter Killer' is planning a series of improvements in response to user requests.

Jul 12, 2023 - 06:30
 0  20
Big Changes Are Coming to Mark Zuckerberg's Threads -- Here's Why That's Good News

Okay, Thread users, you asked for it, and now you're gonna get it.

Meta Platform's  (META) - Get Free Report recently launched Instagram feature is adding an alternative home feed of posts as part of a series of updates.

DON'T MISS: Kevin O'Leary Has a Passionate Take On Mark Zuckerberg's Threads

The so-called "Twitter Killer," which takes the conversational features of Elon Musk's Twitter and folds them into Meta's existing network, was responding to complaints from subscribers, the BBC reported

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri said a feed for Threads showing posts in chronological order is currently being worked on.

Users want to see posts from accounts they follow rather than chosen by Threads' algorithm.

Shipping Improvements

"With so many people joining @threads so fast these last six days (six days!) the team has been entirely focused on keeping the lights on and fixing bugs" Mosseri said in a July 11 post, "but we're starting to priorite the obvious missing features, like a following feed, the edit button, and post search."

"We're clearly way out over our skis on this, but the team is pumped to start shipping improvements this week," he added, noting that a 100 million people-roughly the population of Egypt-have signed up for Threads in five days.

A number of users expressed frustration at not being offered a feed of posts from people they followed, in the order in which they were posted.

"My kingdom for a chronological timeline," writer Molly Jong-Fast commented

"How about a chronological timeline?" Adriano Real asked. "That would be great. It’s weird seeing a post 10 mins ago below a post from 22 hours ago."

Last year, Instagram announced it was bringing the chronological feed back to the platform, after dropping the feature in favor of a curated feed in 2016.

Other features on the Threads to-do list, according Mosseri, include an ability to edit posts, translation into different languages making it easy to switch between different Threads accounts.

Holding Back the Ads

Currently Threads has no desktop interface, so posts can be made only via the app. But Mosseri said the company is working on that, too.

"The team has been busting their ass, but we know this is a race to the starting line," Mosseri said in an earlier post. "They say ‘make it work, make it great, make it grow.’ Well, we certainly did things out of order, but I promise we will make this thing great.

Meanwhile, the Threads bunch has no immediate plans to roll out advertisements on the platform.

"Our approach will be the same as all our other products: make the product work well first, then see if we can get it on a clear path to 1 billion people, and only then think about monetization at that point," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.

However, Instagram is planning to bring its branded content tools to Threads, according to Axios, giving marketers a way to get involved with paid promotion on the app while advertising is still off limits.

Mosseri said Threads will try to avoid courting news and politics content creators because the topics aren't worth the scrutiny and integrity risks that come along with policing them.

What's Your Reaction?

like

dislike

love

funny

angry

sad

wow