Meta Teases More Threads Features, Twitter Buries Head

More features and improvements should be coming to Threads this week, according to Adam Mosseri, Meta’s head of Instagram.

Posting on Threads, Mosseri said that the company had so far been “entirely focused on keeping the lights on and fixing bugs.”

However, he also confirmed that the team would start to prioritise “obvious missing features” including a following feed, edit button (remember when it took Twitter years to implement that?) and post search and that some of these would start shipping this week.

But while Mosseri and the rest of the Threads team have been working on new features and attracting 100 million users over the course of six days, Twitter seems determined to sabotage the growth of its newest competitor.

Reports have emerged that Twitter is blocking links to the Threads.net website if users search for it.

Andy Baio was one person who spotted the change on Twitter after performing a search using the operator “url:threads.net,” which returned no results. Normally, this search would pull in any tweets with links to the website specified and there are quite a few to say the least.

Post by @waxpancake
View on Threads

However, Linda Yaccarino, the current Twitter CEO and former NBCUniversal advertising boss said that the platform had seen its “largest usage day since February” and that “There’s only ONE Twitter.”

Don’t want to leave you hanging by a thread… but Twitter, you really outdid yourselves! Last week we had our largest usage day since February. There’s only ONE Twitter. You know it. I know it. 🎤
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayacc) July 10, 2023

Twitter owner Elon Musk replied to Yaccarino, adding: “Cumulative user-seconds per day of phone screentime, as reported by iOS & Android, is hardest to game. I think we may hit an all-time record this week.”

However, he provided no evidence for the claim.

Web traffic analysis firm Similarweb contradicted Musk and Yaccarino’s assertions, showing that traffic to Twitter’s website was down by five per cent compared to the previous week and down 11 per cent compared to the same time last year.

The Threads effect?
Traffic to Twitter’s website was down 5% compared with the same days of the previous week, and 11% compared to the same days last year.
Check out our full analysis of the hyper-growing social app: https://t.co/DntHzgImBT pic.twitter.com/2PRTYLReyZ
— Similarweb (@Similarweb) July 11, 2023

Since posting that, the South African businessman has gone on to tweet about transgender issues, replied to a tweet from noted venture capitalist and tech bro Mike Solana dunking on The New York Times and said that an interview disgraced Fox News host held with noted dickhead and accused human trafficker Andrew Tate was “interesting.”

While Threads does not yet have an advertising product, it seems obvious that Musk’s overtures to unsavoury parts of the internet will do little to stem the flow of ad dollars leaving the platform. Advertisers, meanwhile, think that Threads could be a fantastic platform for brands in the future.

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