Meta’s X competitor is introducing features for brands and creators.
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Meta is testing a handful of new features on Threads, its X competitor, the company announced today.
The new additions range from options that the average Threads user might appreciate to content management tools that feel more directly aimed at brands. Threads, which just passed the one-year mark since its official launch on July 5th, 2023, now has more than 175 million monthly active users, including some celebrities and brand accounts.
The most useful new feature, in my opinion, is the ability to have multiple posts saved as drafts. Currently, Threads only allows for one draft — you have to post it or replace it. With the update, users will be able to save up to 100 drafts.
Users will also get new ways to customize their Threads homepage by reordering pinned columns. The columns were part of an earlier update to the desktop site that gave Threads a TweetDeck-like look, allowing users to keep eyes on multiple feeds. Now, users will be able to move columns around depending on what they want to see more prominently.
Other features announced today are likely more useful for marketers running brand accounts. A new Insights page, for example, offers data breakdowns for accounts such as follower demographics, interactions, and “views” — a metric Instagram has been pushing as the primary way to understand how content is performing. Some Threads users got early access to Insights this week. Meta also announced that the ability to schedule Threads posts in advance is coming soon. New features will roll out on web first, with mobile versions being “explored” later on.
Though Threads has had rapid growth following its release last year, the platform is still fighting to capture the same relevance that X amassed. In some cases, the people running the platform have purposely tried to distance themselves from what Twitter was; Instagram head Adam Mosseri said early on that Threads wouldn’t prioritize news or recommend political content, the very topics that made X useful in the first place. Reporting suggests that Meta plans to introduce ads on Threads sometime next year, which explains the influx of brand-friendly tools like analytics and scheduling. The hope is that when companies and celebrities finally have had enough of X, they’ll flock to Threads instead.
