By
Bhushan Akolkar
April 25th, 2024
As Instagram Threads brings new features, advertisers express their desire to include additional functionality like chronological feeds and hashtag searches.
Two weeks after launching Twitter competitor Instagram threads, tech giant Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ: META) introduced new features to the platform, along with a follows tab. On Tuesday, July 19, Instagram software engineer Cameron Roth shared a Threads post while announcing several additions to the app as part of its Apple iOS update.
The introduction of the follows tab shall make it easier for users to see who is following them. Also, the upgrade will allow users to access a translate button to read texts in other languages as well as easily read posts from people they don’t follow. Roth also noted that the iOS upgrade comes with some software bug fixes along with loading improvements.
Threads, the new app from Meta, gained enormous popularity with over 100 million sign-ups in just five days. This sparked reactions from Twitter‘s owner Elon Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino. However, data from Sensor Tower and Similarweb indicated a slight decline in growth and engagement the following week.
Advertisers expressed their desire for Threads to include additional features like chronological feeds and hashtag searches. These improvements could enable them to create more effective ad campaigns once Meta provides the opportunity.
In a separate Threads post on Tuesday, July 18, Roth explained further regarding the upgrade that users “may need to restart your app to see some of these or otherwise wait until the end of the day! We use a system of server-delivered flags which can take a while to fully release,” he wrote.
Threads Active Users Drop by 50%
After finding a strong rush of 100 million users in the first week of its launch, Threads is struggling to keep up with user engagement on the platform. The latest report suggests that usage of the Threads app has dropped to half from the initial surge.
As per data from web Analytics platform SimilarWeb, Threads had over 49 million daily users worldwide on Android, on July 7. However, by Friday, July 14, the number of active users decreased to 23.6 million. The report suggests that Threads’ audience is approximately 22 percent of the size of Twitter’s.
Threads lacks several essential features and must provide a compelling reason for users to switch from Twitter or adopt Threads as their new social media platform, noted SimilarWeb. However, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg remains unaffected by the recent data and continues to express optimism regarding the platform. He wrote:
“Early growth was off the charts, but more importantly 10s of millions of people now come back daily. That’s way ahead of what we expected. The focus for the rest of the year is improving the basics and retention. It’ll take time to stabilize, but once we nail that then we’ll focus on growing the community. We’ve run this playbook many times (FB, IG, Stories, Reels, etc) and I’m confident Threads is on a good path too.”
Earlier this week, Instagram Threads also introduced the ‘rate limit’ feature to reduce the number of spam accounts on the platform.