Threads is looking to help more people discover relevant conversations and people in the app, by prompting users to add interests to their profile, in order to improve discovery and connection.
As you can see in this example sequence, users are now being prompted to add interests to their Threads profile, to showcase what they’re interested in, and are likely to post about.
As explained by Threads
“Adding interests helps you show off what you’re into and connect with like-minded folks. Topics that you select will also be added to your feeds on home for easy access. Remove or add new ones at any time.”
So you’ll also get custom feeds dedicated to your focus topics, which are also accessible by tapping on the topic tags on any user profile (note: I’ve also asked the Threads team if adding topics to your profile influences the content displayed in your “For You” feed, and will update if/when they respond).
To be clear, the option to add topics to your profile itself isn’t new, with Threads rolling this out last month. But it’s now looking to get more users to action this element, with a view to building a more detailed interest graph in the app, and link more likeminded people to each other.
And it might also help Threads address a key growth issue for creators, in helping them gain more followers in the app.
The challenge in this respect is that automated recommendation algorithms are now so attuned to each users’ personal interests, based solely on their in-app activity, that people don’t really need to follow profiles anymore, as they can just rely on the algorithm to show them what they want to see whenever they log in.
So people aren’t tapping that “Follow” button like they once did, which is why many Threads users have seen their growth plateau after an initial burst.
In order to address this, the Threads team has already moved to put more emphasis on posts from accounts that you follow, in order to incentivize following, while it’s also incorporated more follow options in-stream.
The option to list your interests on your profile is another step in this direction, which the Threads team will be hoping helps to pump up creator follower counts.
It just needs to get more people actively doing it, hence these new prompts.
Threads is also looking to highlight topics of interest within the post composer, via new prompts to add a suggested trending topic, or one related to previous posts you’ve shared, and the Threads team says that adding topics to posts can help improve reach and engagement:
“According to our internal data, posts with tagged topics generally receive more views than those without one, making them an effective way to help you reach more people.”
In combination, these elements could enhance the broader app interest graph, and give the Threads team more data points with which to align user feeds.
But the capacity to gain more followers seems like the biggest driver at this point.
You can add topics to your Threads profile by selecting “Edit profile,” then “Interests”. You can add up to 10 topics to your profile display.
