Instagram Threads from Meta brings custom feeds and an improved user experience. Bluesky only has 20 million users, but this is only one month after they surpassed that milestone. Threads hopes to ride on its existing user base to offer larger personalization options and avoid problems.
Bluesky’s rapid growth has been driven by a surge of users transitioning from Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter, especially after the recent U.S. elections. Since just a few months ago, Bluesky’s user count has skyrocketed to 7 million as users seek alternatives that better suit their views. The app had reached 20 million users by November 15, which shows its unique take on the present market. Some of this influx is due to our frustration with X’s recent policy shift around user blocking and data use.
Can Threads keep up with Bluesky’s unstoppable growth?
Meanwhile, Threads has a good headstart, with over 275 million monthly users due to its Instagram integration. However, Threads is in a vulnerable position: it is being pushed by Bluesky, which is gaining popularity and ease of use. Threads is releasing custom feeds to improve user satisfaction and keep pace with the increasingly large demand for personalization, launching the feature worldwide.
With custom feeds, users can create their content streams around specific interests or people they follow, making engaging in topics and discussions you’re interested in commenting on simpler. This puts this feature up against Bluesky’s personalization tools, which allow users to set custom feeds and moderation options. Threads users can create a new feed by searching for a topic, tapping on it, and selecting “create new feed.” In addition, users can add certain profiles to their feeds that help to give the feeds a more personalized experience.
It seems that Threads’ global rollout is a strategic move for them to recapture speed and user engagement following the quick ascent of Bluesky. Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said the prompt for this update and the speed at which the platforms need to evolve in response to users changing their preferences, with political discussion taking off since the elections. Need for platforms to adapt quickly to shifting user preferences, as political discussions have gained traction since the elections.
Introducing custom feeds is in reaction to user needs, while Threads has come in for criticism for prioritizing political discourse — and then de-prioritizing it — over other types. It would make Threads a better product for users to garner more control over the content they share. Custom feeds can be pinned to the top of the web client version of the interface, and users will have swift access to their chosen discussions in the manner that TweetDeck functions.
With changes in X policies, like removing the blocked users’ feature and the widely discussed user data policy, Bluesky can attract people and is quite resilient. These shifts bring a wave of user migration, and many people are looking to more private platforms with control over their data.
Bluesky had more users and raised the daily active user needle to a point where it was almost online with Threads five times before the elections and then 1.5 times now. Threads lead by sheer numbers, but Bluesky’s user engagement and website visit metrics are notable. According to a recent report, Bluesky boasted more daily website visits in the US and UK than Threads, a hint of more potential growth.
A new era for social media seems to be emerging with the shift to Bluesky, which is increasingly becoming about what you want. Bluesky surged in adoption from the Bluesky and Threads apps, while Threads lagged. According to Bluesky’s findings on Similarweb, app usage increased 519% in the U.S.
Featured image credit: Furkan Demirkaya/Gencraft AI
