A week after Instagram Threads announced it had begun testing a search feature in Australia and New Zealand, today the feature is expanding to “most” English and Spanish speaking countries, according to a post on Threads from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The expansion will affect countries where people post in English and Spanish, including Argentina, India, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Though Threads — Meta’s attempt to emulate Twitter, now called X — had offered a rudimentary search function at launch, it would only expose Threads users, not their content. That changed last week with the launch of full-text search, which allows users to look up keywords and topics discussed on the platform, not just other people.
“We are actively listening to community feedback and working on more features to improve the search experience,” the company said in a statement at the time of initial testing.
Image Credits: Instagram
The rapid expansion of the Threads search into more markets is part of Instagram’s broader efforts to increase engagement with the app. Threads had a great debut, becoming the fastest app to reach 100 million users to date, thanks to the way it tied the new user experience to its larger parent app, Instagram, making it easier for users to instantly add both followers and likes. in continuation to.
However, in the weeks since Threads’ arrival in July, user activity has declined.
Mobile intelligence firm Sensor Tower reported in August that the number of daily active users of Threads had dropped 82% since its launch, and now only 8 million users access the app daily. To address this decline, Threads has been quick to introduce more features that users have been asking for, such as search and a fully functional web app. But the latter also had little impact in terms of increased use of the platform, according to data from digital intelligence firm Similarweb. It showed that the speed bump due to the launch of the web app was only 3% globally.
Other new features added shortly after launch include a chronological feed, a place to see your likes, a tab for reposts, and other minor tweaks. But users still need more to make the switch from Twitter/X, such as lists, bookmarks and, most importantly, trends.
Without the combination of both search and trends — features that have made Twitter a global conversation center — Threads is less appealing. X’s timeline isn’t just a feed of updates, it’s a way to see what topics are bubbling up on the platform and what news is coming up. These days, Threads is nice enough to scroll through (especially with its panoramic photo feature), but it doesn’t have the feel of a real-time news network.
Still, Threads could face an additional bump with its search network expansion, as it coincides with X owner Elon Musk’s latest erratic behavior, leading him to threaten to sue the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization that promotes anti-Semitism, combat extremism and anti-Semitism. bigotry. Musk believes it is the ADL that is responsible for X’s declining ad revenue and not, say, X’s now loosened moderation policies in favor of Musk’s favorite brand of “free speech.” The Musk-led changes have led to an increase in anti-Semitic content and hate speech on the platform, according to the ADL and others.
As for Threads, Zuckerberg suggested that the search rollout will continue, as he noted that “more would be coming” after the English- and Spanish-language markets.
Threads isn’t the only Twitter competitor currently working on search. Mastodon also announced more advanced search features last week, allowing users to filter posts on the top instance mastodon.social using a number of search operators.
