Bluesky, a social network similar to Twitter, is experiencing a big increase in users this month. At the same time, Threads, which is Meta’s competitor to X (formerly known as Twitter), is quickly adding new features to its platform. On Friday, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, announced that Threads will begin testing a new feature that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to provide summaries of popular discussions happening on the app. This feature will be found in a section called “Trending now” and will initially be available to users in the United States.
This new AI summary feature is similar to a function on X called Stories, which uses an AI chatbot named Grok to summarize trending topics for users. Threads is also planning to test a broader range of trending topics. Additionally, users will soon have the ability to search for posts within specific date ranges and look for posts from particular accounts.
In his announcement on Threads, Mosseri mentioned that these updates are “long-overdue improvements” to the app’s search and trending features. Meta is making these changes quickly because many users from X have been moving to Bluesky, which has now gained over 20 million users. The growth in Bluesky’s user base has been particularly strong following the recent U.S. presidential election, as X has taken on a more right-leaning tone, especially after Elon Musk used the platform to support Donald Trump’s campaign.
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Threads has also been responding to user feedback about its content algorithm. Many users had expressed dissatisfaction, so the platform has made changes to show more posts from accounts that users follow in their personalized feeds. Earlier this week, Threads introduced custom feeds, allowing users to create their own feeds based on specific topics or particular users. This feature helps Threads compete with Bluesky, which already offers users the ability to customize their own feeds and algorithms.
It’s important to note that while Threads has a much larger user base, with over 275 million monthly active users, Bluesky is quickly catching up in terms of daily active users. According to data from a market research firm called Similarweb, if Bluesky continues to grow at its current rate, it could eventually reach the same level of daily engagement as Threads.
