• by Colin Kirkland , October 9, 2023

In its continued competition with X, formerly Twitter, Meta’s Instagram-adjacent Threads app is testing a “Trends” feature, a key focus on X’s home page that lets users know what is being discussed and shared most frequently on the app at all times.

The update was first spotted in the form of a screenshot by Threads user Willian Max, who wrote: “Oops. I think the trending topics feature just leaked on the timeline.” The screenshot depicts a list of current topics with the amount of threads posted about each topic.

However, the numbering of the five-spot list doesn't follow an obvious order, with just 562 threads about footballer Chase Claypool, who is listed before Jennie from Blackpink’s song “You & Me,” which has over 30,000 related threads.

The list also differs from X’s list in its lack of categorized trending content like News, Sports, and Entertainment. And Threads also does not seem to have a personalized “For You” trends list for each user, although these additions may be included when the feature is officially launched.

Meta is focused on updating Threads’ user functionality in order to attract more users to the social-messaging app, including a mobile and web app, an in-app search function that is available to people in most English and Spanish-speaking countries, a chronological feed, and now a trending topics list.

In its first month, Threads’ Android app usage dropped from 49.2 million to 10.3 million, according to Similarweb.

The platform currently has around 135 million global monthly active users. X has 666 million, according to reports by data.ai.

Threads has always been Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s proposed “friendly” and “positive” answer to fellow billionaire and tech leader Elon Musk’s tumultuous takeover and rebranding of Twitter. However, Zuckerberg’s strategy is proving to be faulty.

With Threads, Meta decided to focus on accomplishing what Twitter/X doesn’t: avoiding offensive and incendiary user debates over current events.

In this way, Threads shares the same structure as X but avoids getting its users bogged down by controversial news topics (the company has blocked terms like “covid,” “vaccination,” “sex,” “porn” etc. from the platform). 

Last week, Instagram head Adam Mosseri tried to clarify Threads’ stance, stating “We’re not anti-news, news is already on Threads. We’re simply trying to avoid over-promising and under-delivering to an incredibly powerful group, which is a mistake we’ve made as a company many times in the past.”

While Meta is being smart in trying to avoid the proliferation of fake news on its new app, breaking news and the debate around it is what makes X -- its direct competitor -- so popular.

It will be interesting to see how Threads rides the line between facilitating engaging content and debate without delving into what Zuckerberg has called a “negative and critical” experience on X.