Threads is promising to introduce a highly-requested feature as the battle between social media giants Meta and Twitter heats up.
The app, which snapped up 30 million users in record time following its launch on Thursday, is set to add a chronological feed.
Threads is Meta’s attempt to topple Twitter as a top destination for breaking news and information, much to the chagrin of Twitter owner Elon Musk. The new app allows people to sign up using their existing Instagram credentials.
However, users were quick to spot that Threads currently shows content at random, including recommended posts from accounts you do not follow.
The non-chronological timeline went against the grain of an app positioning itself as a viable Twitter alternative. After all, one of the main reasons people use Twitter is to discover things as they are happening.
Faced with a genuine competitor, Twitter has reportedly threatened to sue Meta alleging it stole trade secrets when creating the new platform. Musk, and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, have also slammed the app as the latest in a long line of Twitter copycats.
On Friday, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri addressed some of their criticisms in a Threads post announcing the chronological feed.
“If anyone was asking, both Instagram and Facebook have chronological feeds options, so yes, we’re going to bring one to Threads too,” he said.
Mosseri’s post included a screenshot of Musk’s and Dorsey’s tweets deriding the new app’s lack of a chronological feed.
In the absence of a live timeline, some people speculated that Meta was essentially using Instagram’s divisive algorithm to curate what people saw on Threads. Instagram recently revealed that 40 percent of the content shown to users on its app is chosen by artificial intelligence.
Some users complained that Threads was showing them posts by celebrities they did not follow, and was not taking their activity into account when recommending them content. In addition, the search tab on Threads is currently littered with random celeb accounts, instead of trending topics or relevant suggestions, raising more questions about the app’s curation techniques.
Meta previously paid celebrities to use its ill-fated live video feature in 2016. The company was promoting at least one of those celebs, chef and TV personality Gordon Ramsay, as an “early adopter” of Threads.
In another sign that Meta is being proactive in its approach to user feedback, Threads is also working on more ways to allow users to delete their account. The move comes after users noticed that the only way to remove a Threads account was to delete their Instagram account.
