Threads announced on June 16, 2026 that it has reached 500 million monthly active users, adding 100 million users in the 10 months since reporting 400 million in August 2025. Alongside the milestone, the Meta-owned platform unveiled several new features, including a private feed-personalization tool and an expanded Communities experience.
The centerpiece of the update is “Your Algo,” a tool that lets users privately adjust what appears in their feed by specifying topics they want to see more or less of, and setting a duration of one, three, or seven days. The requests are visible only to the user. Your Algo builds on the earlier “Dear Algo” feature, launched in February, which required users to submit feed preferences through a public post. Your Algo is rolling out today in the U.S., Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.
Threads is also bringing its Communities feature out of beta, adding a new “Communities Hub” to help users discover topic-based spaces within the app. Communities now have distinct icons for easier identification. Connor Hayes, head of Instagram, told TechCrunch that discoverability had been a challenge since the feature launched. “One of the challenges that they’ve had since we launched that feature over the last year was that it’s hard to organically find the communities that matter to you sometimes,” Hayes said.
The platform is also expanding Live Chats — launched in April for real-time conversations during events like the FIFA World Cup — to more communities, with full availability across all communities expected by July. New capabilities include co-hosting chats and quoting moments to a user’s feed. Hayes described Live Chats as “a nice second screen companion experience” for users following commentary while watching events.
The growth and feature additions come as Threads has worked to close gaps with rival platform X, having added features such as robust search, hashtags, a chronological feed, DMs, ghost posts, and desktop messaging over the past year.
Source: TechCrunch