Themes will add an alternative home feed of posts as part of a series of updates to the new social media app after users complained.
Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said a Threads feed showing posts in chronological order is currently in the works.
Users want to see posts from accounts they follow, not selected by the Threads algorithm.
Mr Mosseri said the new feed was “on the list” of changes to Threads.
Meta, which owns Threads, Instagram and Facebook, launched the social media app last week and more than 100 million users have signed up to use it.
Mr Mosseri said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, had given the “thumbs up” to an alternative feed after a number of users expressed frustration at not being offered a feed of posts from people they follow, in the order in which they are published.
Other features “on the list,” according to Mr. Mosseri, include:
- ability to edit posts
- translation into different languages
- making it easy to switch between different Threads accounts
While it’s possible to view Threads on the web through Threads.net, there’s no desktop interface — posts can only be made through the app — and that’s also something the company is “working on,” according to Mr. Mosseri.
There is no search function either. When it announced the app’s launch, the company said it would add a “more robust search feature” along with improvements to the selection of recommended posts.
Meanwhile, the only way right now to completely delete a Threads profile is to delete the associated Instagram account, which many users will be reluctant to do — another issue the company is looking to fix.
When Threads launched, Meta announced plans to allow it to communicate with other social media platforms, such as Mastodon, using something known as fediverse.
But this proposal, while welcomed by some, met with resistance.
“Clear Victory”
The idea of fediverse is that it’s like email. Someone on Gmail can exchange emails with someone using Hotmail, for example, and fediverse can be described as this idea applied to social media.
At some point in the future, Meta wants users to be able to use their Threads account to interact with other social media platforms using ActivityPub – a protocol with the necessary programming code – such as Mastodon, WordPress or Lemmy, a Reddit alternative.
But some concerns Threads threatens the idea of this system as a whole, because of the practice that big tech companies have used in the past – “embrace, expand and extinguish”, when a company with many resources expands the possibilities of a new technology so that it dramatically becomes the new standard, leaving people with no choice but to use its platform.
Mastodon CEO Eugene Rochko dismissed those fears, saying that Meta joining Threads was a “validation of the movement toward decentralized social media” and “a clear victory for our cause.”
But concern among users has grown with over a hundred Mastodon communities joining what they call a “fedipact” – an agreement to block Meta’s access to their community under any circumstances – so even when Threads starts supporting ActivityPub , users do not have access to everything in fediverse.
One other feature coming to Threads at some point may also get mixed reviews. There is no advertising on the platform – for now.