Option to Customize “River Content” in Threads Mode 3: Choose 1
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, announced that the social platform Threads will now offer users more “customization options” to switch between modes and see the community content they like.
Zuckerberg pointed out that this new feature is currently in the testing phase and will allow users to choose from three options: “For You,” “Following,” or “Custom Feeds,” providing users with greater flexibility and addressing the previous limitation of only seeing single recommended feeds.
Zuckerberg stated that users who enable the testing feature can set their default displayed feeds through a simple operation. After opening the application, users only need to tap and hold the tab located above the feeds on the dynamic page, then select the “Edit Feeds” option. Users can then sort their feeds and place the most frequently used ones at the top, setting them as the default content displayed each time they open the application.
Zuckerberg also mentioned that Meta will continue to observe feedback and hopes to expand this feature to more users. In other words, Threads’ algorithm content recommendation mechanism may be facing the biggest update since its inception.
Viewing on Threads
The question is, why did Threads suddenly announce the optimization of community user experience at this time, after being launched for nearly a year and a half on July 5, 2023, with over 275 million monthly active users as of October 2024, without making any changes earlier or later? The answer may be related to the current influx of a large number of “community refugees” in the United States.
Influx of Community Refugees Intensifies Competition among New Social Platforms in the United States
According to foreign media Axios, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed that from November 1 to 26, within a few weeks, Threads had already registered 35 million new users. Looking back to November 14, the number of new registered users was at least 15 million. In terms of daily registration, Threads has been registering over 1 million people per day for the past three months.
Even Bluesky, the new community media founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, has seen a large number of new users since the U.S. presidential election on November 5. As of last week, the number of users reached 20 million. According to Similarweb data, within two weeks after November 5, Bluesky’s usage increased at least five times.
According to Platformer, the number of Bluesky users exceeded 22 million before November 25. To cope with the surge in new users, Bluesky plans to expand its content moderation team from 25 to 100 people in order to maintain a healthy community environment.
With the rise of competitors like Bluesky, Threads has been continuously improving its user experience to meet market challenges. Recently, Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram, confirmed that Threads will adjust the recommendation algorithm for “For You,” focusing more on accounts that users actually follow rather than excessive recommendations from “strangers.” He also revealed that Threads will soon allow users to search posts within specific date ranges.
Viewing in Threads
In addition, users can now view videos in landscape mode within the application. Previously, even when clicking on a video to enter full-screen mode, the application could not rotate horizontally and could only be in portrait mode. Now, with the latest app, users can view photos/videos in landscape mode.
This article is authorized and reprinted from: Digital Times
This article was initially written by AI and organized/edited by Li Xiantai.