Nearly three years after launching as a rival to X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads has reached 500 million monthly active users, Meta announced on Tuesday.
Alongside the milestone, the social platform unveiled several new features, including a new tool called “Your Algo,” which gives users more control over what appears in their feeds.
The feature builds on Threads’ “Dear Algo” tool introduced in February, which allowed users to influence their feeds by posting public messages such as, “Dear Algo, show me more posts about podcasts.”
With Your Algo, users can now make those requests privately without sharing a public post. Users can choose to see more or less content related to specific topics and decide how long the preference remains active for one, three, or seven days. These settings are only visible to the user.
The feature is rolling out starting today in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
Threads is also expanding its Communities feature, which is now leaving beta testing. Originally launched to help users connect around shared interests, Communities offer dedicated spaces for discussions on topics such as sports, television, books and K-pop.
The platform is introducing a new Communities Hub to make it easier for users to discover relevant groups. Communities will also receive unique icons to help users identify them more easily.
According to Threads head Connor Hayes, the new hub is designed to help people quickly find communities that match their interests, creating a more engaging experience.
Threads is also expanding Live Chats, a feature introduced in April that enables real-time discussions during major events such as the FIFA World Cup. Users will soon be able to co-host chats and share highlighted moments directly to their feeds.
The company said all communities will gain access to Live Chats by July.
The expansion of Live Chats is part of Threads’ broader effort to compete more directly with X in real-time conversations around breaking news and live events.
When Threads first launched, it lacked several features commonly associated with X, including advanced search tools, hashtags and chronological feeds. Over time, the platform has added these capabilities while continuing to introduce new features aimed at improving user engagement.
The latest user milestone also highlights Threads’ continued growth. The platform added 100 million monthly active users in the past 10 months after reporting 400 million users in August 2025.
Over the past year, Threads has introduced several new features, including direct messaging, ghost posts and desktop messaging support.
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