December 3, 2024
The company announced Monday that Meta's Instagram Threads, a competitor to Elon Musk's X, is launching a more efficient search engine. Built on Instagram's social graph, Threads allows users to search for specific posts using filters based on user profiles and a variety of criteria.
While Threads' new feature, which offers options like filtering by language, keywords, phrases, excluded words, and hashtags, doesn't match X's sophisticated search, it does improve the ability to find posts. Additionally, Threads is close to Bluesky's search functionality, which supports filters such as user profiles and a range of queries via advanced queries. However, the Bluesky app does not yet display all of these filtering options in its interface.
In the past, Threads' search functionality was limited to keyword searches with the two filters of "Top" for the most interesting articles and "Recent" for the newest. A post from the Threads account indicated that the improved search feature would be made available to users around the world in the coming weeks.
In response to the growing danger posed by Bluesky, a developing competitor to X, Meta has accelerated the release of its features. After the US election, Bluesky's user base grew to around 24 million after surpassing 9 million in September. Indeed, customers left X due to Elon Musk's political views and policy changes, which included plans to change blocking methods and allow AI companies to train on data of X users.
Threads has added new features to compete with Bluesky, including an improved algorithm, a redesign for easier feed navigation, and adjustable default feeds. Additionally, Meta is rumored to be creating Starter Packs, its own version of Bluesky's user-curated recommendation lists.
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