Threads, the Twitter-like app from Instagram, is rolling out its “trending now” feature widely to all users in the U.S. The official rollout comes a month after the app started testing the feature with a select number of users in the country. Trending topics are available on the search page and in the app’s For You Feed, TechCrunch reported.
In a Threads post, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced the official launch and noted that the company sees it as “an easy way to see what others are talking about on Threads.”
The launch of trending topics will bring Threads more in-line with X, as it will allow users to find timely conversations that are taking place on the social network. Up until now, Threads has been lacking a real-time sense of community, and the introduction of trending topics could help remedy this as it lets you get an idea of what people are currently discussing outside of what you see in your own feeds.
According to TechCrunch, the feature is somewhat limited, as Threads only displays five trending topics at a time, while X shows you multiple. It’s possible that Threads may be limiting the number of trending topics to prevent issues around safety and spam.
Gizmodo reported Thread users in the United States will finally be able to see what topics are trending on the app, a longhand staple feature of Twitter, according to a post from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday. The “Trending Now” page appears under the search bar on Threads.
“Trending now is rolling out to the US today so you can see what people are talking about on Threads,” said Mark Zuckerberg in a post on Threads.
According to Gizmodo, Meta tested a trending page on Threads earlier this year called “Today’s Topics.” It appears the company shifted the name of the page to a more familiar name. The “Trending” page has been a staple of Twitter, Threads’ competitor, for years and it’s been highly cited as a missing feature of the Threads platform.
Meta launched Threads last summer, and it blew up in popularity with 49 million users in the first two days. Then all the hype faded away as many of those millions who signed up for the platform when it was first released just stopped using it. Since then, Meta continued to add new feature such as a web browser version, a retweet-like feature called reposts, and even an edit button. These features have made Threads a popular app once again, and Meta said last month that there are more users now than at launch.
Engadget reported Meta is finally providing a bit of visibility into what kinds of conversations are happening on its Twitter competitor, Threads. The service is rolling out its “trending now” feature to all US users, Mark Zuckerberg said in a post.
For now, the feature is still fairly limited. Threads only shows five trending topics at any one time, which is likely an attempt to keep the list relatively curated and avoid some of the issues that have plagued the feature on Twitter and now X.
In my opinion, it is probably good that Threads is attempting to provide users with new features while also curating what goes into trending topics. That might help keep the Meta’s social media alive for a while.