When Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta launched itsnew microblogging app Threads, it’s fair to say that it went pretty well. Within just five days, there were already over 100 million users, thanks in no small part to the ability to set up Threads using anexisting Instagram account.
However, daily user numbers have dropped significantly since that first week, with some users showing frustration at the lack of key features available on other microblogging appssuch as Xand Mastodon.
One of the biggest gripes was that there was no way to search for posts based on a specific keyword, but the good news is that the feature has finally arrived. Using keywords to find user accounts and posts is now possible. Here’s how to use Search on Threads.
Didn’t Threads already have a search feature?
When Threads launched, it had a search icon at the bottom of the screen, just like you’d expect. That search function didn’t work quite how people hoped, however. That’s because it initially only allowed you to search for user accounts; there was no way to search for a specific keyword, and hashtags aren’t a thing on Threads.
A lot of users were understandably frustrated by this missing feature. If you wanted to read a bunch of posts about a trending topic, the only thing you could do was hope that they popped up in your feed.
Thankfully, the feature has been added and has already been rolled out to most countries that speak English or Spanish, withMark Zuckerberg indicatingthat the feature will be rolled out to further countries. If the feature is available in your country, you’ll need to update to the latest version of Threads to use it. I found that even after updating, I couldn’t use the feature until I’d restartedmy iPhone.
How to use Search in Threads
Using keyword search in Threads is fairly simple and does what most people expected the search function to do when the app first launched. You use the same search page for both profiles and posts; you’ll see a list of matching profiles in the results, along with the option to search for posts instead.
Other new features in Threads
It feels like Threads was rushed out a little before it was fully ready in order to take advantage of the chaos that continues to dog Elon Musk’s Twitter (now called X for no good reason at all). A lot of key features were missing, such as the ability to view only posts from accounts you follow or to search by keyword.
Thankfully, more and more features are being added all the time. It’s now possible tocustomise your Threads feedto show posts from just the accounts that you’re following, useThreads on your desktop, see just the content that you’ve reposted, mention other Threads users, and customise the alt text on an image that you post.
However, there are still some key features missing. There’s still no equivalent for hashtags, no way to keep track of trending topics, and you can’tsend direct messagesthrough the app. There’s also no way to edit a post once you’ve sent it. We look forward to seeing what new features are added in the future.
