As Bluesky soars, Threads rolls out custom feeds globally | TechCrunch

As X competitor Bluesky takes off, topping 20 million users, Meta’s own Twitter-like app, Instagram Threads, has begun rolling out a new feature called custom feeds to its global audience. Hoping to capitalize on user demand for more personalization, custom feeds are meant to allow Threads users to easily build feeds around specific topics or those including certain user profiles.

This would make it easier for Threads users to tap into the communities and conversations that are most important to them and could help to challenge Bluesky’s own set of tools for personalization, including those that let users build their own algorithms, feeds, and lists, as well as those that let them configure their own moderation tools.

The global launch of custom feeds on Threads comes only days after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the feature was entering testing. That signals that Threads is moving quickly to topple some of the momentum that Bluesky has recently seen. Since the U.S. elections, Bluesky adoption has soared as users looked for an alternative to the now more right-leaning X, owned by Elon Musk. Other decisions at X have also pushed people to depart, including how it has changed the block feature and its policy around training AI models on user data.

As a result, Bluesky has significantly grown its user base from around 7 million users just a couple of months ago to now north of 20 million.

But Threads retains the lead among the X competitors, with more than 275 million monthly users, largely thanks to its ability to jump-start its network by leveraging Instagram’s social graph and integrations with Meta’s other apps. However, some users on Threads have been disappointed by its decision to deprioritize politics, and have asked for other options beyond the default algorithmic “For You” feed and the chronological “Following” feed.

That’s where custom feeds come in.

To use the feature, you’ll first need to search for and then tap into a topic to see the latest posts. From there, you’ll tap on the three-dot icon next to the search term and choose the option “create new feed.” You can also choose to add specific user profiles to a feed by visiting the user’s profile, tapping the three-dot icon above their profile photo, and then tapping to add them to one of your feeds.

After the feeds are created, they can be pinned to the top of the Threads’ home screen on the web in the columns-based view (similar to Twitter’s TweetDeck or X Pro), making them easier to access.