Threads continues to roll out more updates and improvements ahead of the busy holiday season, and the announcements also coincide with a rise in interest in Bluesky. Which may or may not be related.

Either way, on Friday, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri announced that Threads is testing out some changes to how it's displaying trending topics in the app, while it's also rolling out new search filters to expand on its discovery elements.

To start, on trending topics, Mosseri says that Threads is expanding its listing of AI-generated trends in the app in order to add more context to what's generating discussion.
This is an example of the current Threads trending display, which was launched to all U.S. users back in March.

The new listing will include more trends and more AI elements.

As per Mosseri:

We're launching a test showing more than five trending topics on Threads, and we're using Meta AI to summarize those trends. You can get to all the content, but you can also get a little bit of a description of what's going on.

To be clear, the trends themselves have always been determined by Meta's AI systems, as per its original outline of the process. The only differences here are expanded listable trends and including an AI-generated summary with each, rather than a highlighted post related to the topic.
X's Grok-generated trend summaries describe each trend, which is the same direction that Threads is now moving. While these Grok summaries haven't always been spot on, it might take some time and testing before Threads opens this up to all users.

Mosseri says this is being tested first with a subset of U.S. users.

Next, Threads will also enhance the Search element to include more filters and tools to aid you in finding what you're looking for.

"In the new Search experience, you will be able to search within a specific date range or search for posts from a single account.
Updated search experience in threads will drill down further into more specific results. That would be a huge help to social media managers, especially.

In-demand features included improved search and video viewing in landscape; As engineer Tim Oliver on Threads said now, if you want to see videos on Threads in landscape format, you can just turn your phone while viewing.
Which is a relatively small but also significant update, which will put Threads more in line with other online video experiences, while it'll also make it a better medium for watching, say, sports highlights, which remains a key element that Threads needs to capture if it wants to beat out the former bird app.

Though as mentioned, Elon's X project does not appear to be the thing that's really pre-occupying the attention of Threads, at least for now-with the rise of Bluesky seemingly prompting at least some concern at Meta HQ. Bluesky is still much smaller than Threads, so it's not like it poses an immediate threat, in terms of taking the real-time social crown. But as the momentum shift behind Bluesky raised eyebrows, that may well have prompted Threads to get more active in rolling out its updates.

Or was this all planned ahead of an expected rise in usage over the holidays.

Either way, more features for Threads, and more updates to the experience as Threads continues to establish itself as a legit force in the social media space.