Social Throwback 2023: All updates that strengthened Threads' social media experiment

To say that 2023 has been a tumultuous year for the tech world would be an understatement. From Elon Musk’s controversial decisions at X (formerly Twitter) to the Sam Altman saga at OpenAI, it has been a year filled with numerous changes in the technological sphere, specifically, social media. 

It was at the end of June when news started surfacing that Meta was building a platform similar to X. The news caught fire when the app, then known by the name “Project 92” appeared on Google Play Store for a brief moment and was taken down. It was officially launched on July 5, 2023, and made available in one hundred countries. 

Within five days of its launch, Threads overtook OpenAI’s ChatGPT to become the fastest-growing app in history with 100 million users. 

This seemed to have aggravated X owner Elon Musk, who sent a legal notice to Meta over "systematic, willful and unlawful misappropriation" of Twitter's intellectual properties and trade secrets, along with scraping of Twitter's data, for the development of Threads.

Despite this exponential growth, however, the app saw a steep downfall as the number of active users started declining rapidly by July end. By mid-August the number of daily users on Threads fell by 80%. 

Despite the ups and downs, Meta has tried to keep the app running by introducing new features and frequent updates to enhance the user experience and improve the overall product. Learning from its rival X and its own platforms, Meta has routinely introduced new features to lure in more users. As 2023 comes to an end, here is the journey of the and the updates that have been introduced till now:

July  

• Threads app went live on Google Play Store. 

• Launched new features in response to user feedback, including a chronological feed, post translations, and more.

• Ability to subscribe and receive notifications from accounts a user doesn’t follow and a “+” button that lets users follow new accounts from the replies on a post.

• A translation button and a tab on users’ activity feed dedicated to showing who’s followed them.

• A “Following” tab that allows users to see chronological posts from people they follow instead of the less cohesive, algorithmically curated content that appeared in the “For you” feed.
  

August 

• Added a new “Send on Instagram” option, which enabled users to directly share a Thread to their IG DMs.

• Rolled out custom alt-text, so that users can add descriptions to photos, or edit auto-generated alt-text tags, before posting.

• Added a new “Mention” button on profiles.

• Added the capacity to sort the following list (by who you followed first/last), along with a new section in Settings where users can view the Threads that they’ve liked.

• Started integrating ActivityPub, with support for rel=me links, which enables users to verify their identity on other platforms that support fediverse protocols.

• Rolled out the much-anticipated web app of Threads.

September

• Expanded the search feature to “most” English and Spanish-speaking countries.

• Rolled out features such as turning on notifications for 24 hours for a particular post and the ability to quote posts on the web.

• Added a way to switch between multiple accounts without logging out.

October

• Rolled out a free edit button.

• Launched “Voice Threads,” which allows users to add voice posts to the social network.

• Polls and GIFs features added.

November

• Ability of users to turn off automatic sharing of their Threads posts to other apps, including Instagram and Facebook added.

• Rolled out an update to let users delete their Threads profile separately from their Instagram account.

• Introduced a way to opt out of being featured outside Threads in Settings → Privacy.

• Ability to pin posts added.

• Mobile web browser functionality enabled.

December

• Expanded keyword search globally and in all languages.

• Emojis could be turned into tags.

• Updated Threads link referrer so that publishers can see where their traffic comes from.

• Instagram setting integrated into Threads that lets users control how much fact-checked content they see in their feed.

• Became available to users in the European Union.