Threads is expanding its rollout of swipeable custom topic feeds from the main timeline, which could make it easier to engage in more community discussions in the app.
More people will be able to create topic feeds based on keyword searches within the app, according to an explanation by Instagram and Threads chief Adam Mosseri (I wonder when Threads will get its own chief).

Currently, the access is not there for all Threads users, but for those who do have the access, you can create a custom feed in the app by doing:

You enter your search terms

You tap the three-dot icon next to the search field on the results screen

You select "Create new feed
You can also add specific profiles to your custom feed by visiting the profile that you want to add, then tapping on the three dots icon above the profile photo and selecting "Add to feed".

You can also make feed on desktop by selecting "Pin to Home" from the left-hand side menu and then searching for whatever term/s you choose. That feed will also be active in the app, once the option is available to you.

Once you've made your custom search feed, you can select it to be "Top" or "Recent". Then you can swipe across to it from your main feed, by tapping the Threads icon at the top of the screen.

As mentioned above, it might be a nice way to keep up with even more timely conversations in the app, and express interest in more topics. Yet Mosseri himself doesn't think that this will be a huge issue.

At the end of January, when responding to a user's query about introducing personal lists, Mosseri explained that:

“My honest take though is that requested features like lists, an edit button, a following feed, trending, and hashtags are all good to build, but none noticeably grow Threads or Threads usage. We’ll continue to build them because it’s good to build features that your most engaged users are excited about, but it’s hard to prioritize them when the measurable impact is negligible.”

Threads has now included all these elements, or at least its own variations of them, but Mosseri believes that these won't lead to a substantial increase in usage, despite the constant demands for such from users.

What is more likely to drive more usage?

According to Mosseri, reach is the way forward:

" Reach is always going to be the thing that people focus on, for good reason. It's in our interest, actually. People's reach grows. If you create content that people want to see and if we show it to them, they're happy, you're happy, and our business grows. If we don't, we just leave value on the table. I feel that people don't believe me even when I'm saying that, but that is very, very much true.
As such, Meta has been trying to shift the emphasis away from things like Likes and follower counts onto "Views" instead, because that's more reflective of relative "success" in the modern social media landscape.

Because like them or not, a lot of people rely on the "For You" algorithms to show them the stuff they might be interested in every time they log in, so they don't need to follow accounts explicitly in order to get the best in-app experience. So you are not going to reach new audience dimensions as you do on Twitter or Instagram. However, hopefully, if you produce the kind of content that the Threads algorithm likes, your reach will grow in tandem.

So while people are still eager to add in features like lists and hashtags for their own purposes, according to Mosseri, these are not key features, at least not for Meta's broader performance measurement in terms of overall usage and engagement.

Yet, they may help to engage more power users, and with only a small number of people creating the majority of content, that may still be critically important. It just might not show up as clearly in the data, but there is a reason why Bluesky has recently seen a surge in interest, following Threads' challenges on Election Day.

Bluesky has more of the old Twitter feel, and you can also use chronological following feed by default.

But that's really the big thing.
The reason a lot of people tuned into Twitter at its peak was that you could log in, get a real-time stream of updates on topics you cared about, and it just would just continue to flow through as the tweets just keep coming, giving it that active pulse feel. You felt connected, in the moment, and defaulting to algorithm-driven "For You" feeds is just not the same, while Threads' shift away from whatever it deems "political" also moves it even further away from this.

On the other hand, algorithmic feeds spur more engagement. It's not debatable; the data speaks to this. The ability to be able to surface more of the best-performing content across the app from more creators boosts overall usage and engagement and provides the best creators with more reach. Which, in a sense of an overall data level, is a much better option, which is why every app is now making algorithmic feeds the default.

What is immediately lost, however, is immediacy. So while Threads users come up with new theories every other day as to what it really needs to be more like Twitter, what they want in most cases is that sense of presence back, which Meta's not going to do because it's generating better response with its AI recommendations.

As Mosseri indicated in September, discussing in reference to the similar on IG, how the company thought about defaulting to the Following feed and tested it in quite a few instances:. Every time we have, there's a sub-group of people who are happy, there's a bunch of people who forget that they're in it, and then overall, everybody who's in it uses Instagram less and less over time, and when we ask them questions like "how satisfied are you with Instagram? ", they actually report being less happy with Instagram more and more over time, on average.

And then there's these second order effects where their friends start using Instagram less [and] because they use it less, they send less likes and comments, messages, and then there's all of this other stuff, and it just gets worse and worse, and quickly."

Overall, users spend more time with recommended content. That is to say, that Twitter feel that you want, that Bluesky apparently now delivers on better than Threads for some users, it's gone, and it's not coming back. Bluesky will probably also lean further into this itself, when it eventually starts to rely on ad revenue for its business.

Social platforms make more money the more you use them, and algorithmic feeds drive that usage.

So while Threads continues to add more Twitter-like features and some of them are going to be well received by many of your users, there is always going to be that other feature that's high on the agenda that Threads "needs" to really win out. But what you’re likely looking for is immediacy, and Threads won’t derive the most benefit if it focuses on that.