You can now customize your For You feed on Threads using swipes

Comment
Threads, Meta’s Twitter/X competitor and the company’s first bet on decentralized social media, is now making it easier for users to control their Threads experience. After launching a customizable dashboard interface last week, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced Monday that the app is now rolling out the ability for users to signal which sort of posts they wanted to see more or less of.
Users would “swipe right on a post to like it, or swipe left to show you’re not interested,” Mosseri explained in a post on Threads. “We’ll use those signals to show you more posts like the ones you swipe right on and fewer of those you swipe left on.”
The idea to use a swipe gesture to indicate interest is a user interface interaction that recalls dating apps like Tinder, but the ability to train an algorithm about what sort of things people like could help Threads more quickly get up-to-speed on personalizing users’ For You feeds. TikTok, for example, uses a similar mechanism by allowing users to mark videos as “not interested,” and X does the same for posts.
Across Threads’ competitors, there are a number of different approaches to how content should be delivered. X uses a more traditional social media algorithm that leverages likes and engagement patterns alongside other metrics to determine what sort of content people would like to see. On the flip side, the startup Bluesky, originally incubated inside Twitter (now X), offers a “choose your own algorithm” model where users can customize feeds to their liking or follow prebuilt feeds like “What’s Hot” or “Popular with Friends” to view the network’s content in the way they prefer instead.
Well-designed For You feeds, however, can increase engagement and time spent with an app — areas Meta is looking to improve with Threads.
Though Meta’s newest app today counts more than 150 million monthly active users, for comparison, Elon Musk claims X now has 600 million monthly active users, 300 million of whom use the platform daily. (He doesn’t indicate what portion of that user base consists of automated accounts or spam, though — and as X is no longer a publicly reported company, the numbers can’t be externally verified.) Still, it’s fair to say that Threads has further to go to catch up with X, though it’s outpacing Bluesky’s 5.7 million users and Mastodon’s 7.2 million, less than 1 million of whom are active on a monthly basis at present.
Threads first began testing the side-swiping gesture to signal interest in posts in March, where swiping one way would reveal a heart icon and the other would display an icon of an eye with a line crossed over it — a symbol typically used for “hide” or “hidden.”
While Threads today says it will use the swipes to help users customize their own feeds, the signals Meta collects could be put to a larger purpose over time. With enough data, the swipes could also help the company determine what posts are popular versus those that are largely being “downvoted” (swiped left on) by the community. This could help the app’s For You algorithm more quickly improve.
Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch’s coverage.
Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly.
The latest Fintech news and analysis, delivered every Tuesday.
TechCrunch Mobility is your destination for transportation news and insight.
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice.
AI-powered virtual physical therapy platform Sword Health has seen its valuation soar 50% to $3 billion.
Jeffrey Katzenberg and Sujay Jaswa, along with three general partners, manage $1.5 billion in assets today through their Build, Venture and Seed strategies.
If content is king, then the focus today is on how the king is expanding the empire: print and traditional media first got augmented by websites, and now websites are…
The startup has been pursuing a ground-up redesign of a well-understood technology.
Sékr, a startup that offers a mobile app for outdoor enthusiasts and campers, is launching a new AI tool for planning road trips. The new tool, called Copilot, is available…
OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT has been down for several users across the globe for the last few hours.
Microsoft’s education-focused flavor of its cloud productivity suite, Microsoft 365 Education, is facing investigation in the European Union. Privacy rights non-profit noyb has just lodged two complaints with Austria’s data…
Since the shock of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, solar energy has been having a moment in Europe. Electricity prices have been going up while the investment required to get…
Featured Article
It’s clear that this year will be a turning point for DEI.
The keynote will be focused on Apple’s software offerings and the developers that power them, including the latest versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, visionOS and watchOS.
Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. Unfortunately, Boeing’s Starliner launch was delayed yet again, this time due to issues with one of the three redundant computers used by United…
The court ruling said that Fearless Fund’s Strivers Grant likely violates the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which bans the use of race in contracts.
Instagram Threads is rolling out the ability for users to signal which sort of posts they wanted to see more or less of by swiping.
The Japanese billionaire who commissioned SpaceX for a private mission around the moon on a Starship rocket has abruptly canceled the project, citing ongoing uncertainties around when the launch vehicle…
Malicious actors are abusing generative AI music tools to create homophobic, racist, and propagandic songs — and publishing guides instructing others how to do so. According to ActiveFence, a service…
As WWDC 2024 nears, all sorts of rumors and leaks have emerged about what iOS 18 and its AI-powered apps and features have in store.
Dallas is the second city that Cruise is easing its way back into after pulling its entire U.S. fleet late last year.
Featured Article
The company has been sued by at least seven creditors, including Wells Fargo.
Featured Article
The Ace are a contender in a crowded market, but they’re still in search of that magic bullet to truly let them stand out from the pack.
The change would see Instagram becoming more like the free version of YouTube, which requires users to view ads before and in the middle of watching videos.
Commerce platform Shopify has acquired Checkout Blocks, allowing Shopify Plus merchants to make no-code customizations in their checkout to enhance customer experience and potentially boost sales.  Checkout Blocks, which debuted…
After the Digital Markets Act (DMA) forced Apple to allow third-party app stores for iOS in Europe, several developers have launched alternative stores, like the AltStore and MacPaw’s Setapp (currently…
Time is relentless and, right now, it’s no friend to procrastination-prone early-stage startup founders. The application window for Startup Battlefield 200 (SB 200) at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 slams shut in…
Cloudera, the once high-flying Hadoop startup, raised $1 billion and went public in 2018 before being acquired by private equity for $5.3 billion in 2021. Today, the company announced that…
The global spend management sector is experiencing a tailwind of sorts. North America is arguably the biggest market in this space, but spend management companies have seen demand rise across…
Neural Concept lets designers model how components will perform before they can be manufactured.
The StrictlyVC roadtrip continues! Coming off of sold-out events in London, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, we’re heading to Washington, D.C. for a cozy-vc-packed, evening at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre…
X will now allow users to post consensually produced NSFW content as long as it is prominently labeled as such.
Ashby consolidates existing talent acquisition tools and leans heavily on AI to automate the more repetitive steps in the recruitment pipeline.
Spotify has announced it’s hiking subscriptions for customers in the U.S., the second such price increase in the space of a year. The music-streaming giant reports that premium pricing will…
Powered by WordPress VIP

source
Sponsor:News technical sponsor
Sponsor:News AI sponsor
Sponsor: AI sponsor
Sponsor: AI sponsor