Meta’s adding another way to help Threads users stay in touch with the latest trending chatter, with new in-stream markers of trending topics that will help to guide users towards rising discussions.
As you can see in this example, Threads is looking to drive more in-the-moment engagement around key events, by signifying trending topics in the Threads feed.
As explained by Meta:
“The Threads highlighter elevates and emphasizes unique perspectives that lead to thoughtful conversations. To start, you’ll see the highlighter in important parts of the app where you discover content, and to mark Trending topics – with more placements coming soon.”
It’s another way to drive more trending discussion, with Threads still working to improve its in-the-moment feel as it seeks to take on Elon Musk’s X.
Which, despite X’s challenges, and Threads’ relative growth, remains a big challenge.
X is still the spiritual home for many live discussion groups, with sports fans, in particular, still heavily aligned to the app.
Indeed, sport remains the single biggest driver of discussion on X, and it’s these groups of embedded, habitual X users that will be tough for Threads to win over.
Because people have made connections on Twitter/X, they’ve established behaviors that align with the platform, they’ve built expanded, international groups of friends and fellow fans, to the point where it’ll be difficult to get them all to migrate to a new app.
So they’ll keep using X, until there’s a clear reason not to. And with Threads thus far not being the greatest facilitator of live, in-the-moment chats, it clearly hasn’t been able to get these audiences across as yet.
Maybe an emphasis on trending topics will help, in driving more topical discussion and engagement, while Meta’s also investing in sports partnerships to bring unique, live content to the app, and improving its algorithmic approach to better emphasize live discussion.
There’s no singular answer on this front, but maybe, through an accumulation of these efforts, Threads will be able to make inroads on this, and build the app into a more active hive of real-time discussion, and a valuable facilitator of trending chats.
It’s not there yet, but elements like this are another small step in that larger direction.
