In a recent announcement on Threads, the head of the platform said that they are rebalancing post ranking to prioritize content from followed accounts in the home feed. This will result in users seeing more posts from the accounts they follow on Threads rather than randomly recommended posts.
Meta launched Threads, a text-based social platform, in 2023 as a direct competitor to X (formerly Twitter). Initially, it experienced rapid user growth, but this momentum quickly plunged. Many users who abandoned or reduced their use of the platform complained about a cluttered home feed dominated by recommended posts rather than content from the accounts or creators they followed. However, this is set to change with this announcement.
Did Threads only make the change because of the competition?
Some speculate that Threads is rushing to regain its user base as its rival, Bluesky, recently attracted a surge of new active users, surpassing 20 million. Along with Threads prioritizing followed accounts, there are more updates and changes, Threads has also introduced a “custom feed” after very minimal testing. Notably, both of these features were already available on Bluesky from the start.
Threads prioritizing followed accounts could harm creators’ reach
Bossman at threads added to the announcement that this change to the platform’s home feed algorithm could significantly impact the reach of content. Especially for creators who rely on the platform for discoverability and growth. Many creators have expressed concerns that this change could undermine the core principles of Instagram and Threads. It can potentially limit their ability to connect with their audience and build a following.
At last, Mosseri stated that balancing the ability to reach followers and overall engagement is not very easy to achieve. This change is still a work in progress and will be made available to selected users. While on that the head of Threads also asked their users for feedback to improve experience further.
It is interesting to see these giants participate in a race of sustaining users. In the end, this will only benefit the users by improving their social media experience.
