Instagram"s Cameron Roth announced via his account that the recently launched microblogging app Threads has got a bunch of new features. These features are available on iOS as part of the first major update since its release around two weeks ago.
Among various add-ons, the new Threads update for iOS (v292.0) brings the following features to the users:
- In-app language translation
- Follows tab on the Activity feed
- Subscribe to unfollowed users
- Improvements to Activity feed scrolling and loading
- Tappable reposter labels
- Open the Instagram followers list
- A few small crash fixes
- More binary size cuts
It might take a while for these features to land on your device as some of them are server-side rollouts, Cameron noted. He added that you may need to restart the app to see some of the new features.
Early birds who flocked to the Meta-owned Twitter alternative realized that the app lacks some essential features. Language translation was among the much-requested Threads features that Instagram head Adam Mosseri assured is "on the list" for a future rollout.
Now live, the feature will use the same AI-powered translation as Instagram, Cameron said. Moreover, the new Follows tab in the Activity feed doesn"t show content from people you follow but a list of users who started following you recently.
In a recent post, Mosseri also talked about setting rate limits to fight spam content on the budding platform "which is going to mean more unintentionally limiting active people (false positives)."
This comes weeks after Musk announced rate limits for Twitter on grounds of "system manipulation" and "data scrapping." And it was not long before Mosseri"s announcement got a reaction from the Twitter owner.
According to the analytics firm Data.ai, Threads beat Pokémon GO as the biggest app launch after it received 150 million downloads within a week of its launch. On the other hand, it took 33 days for Niantic"s AR-based game to reach the same milestone when it was released in 2016.
Threads was able to bring tens of millions of users onboard in just a few days of its launch. An edge here is the app can enroll Instagram users without needing a separate account, although, deleting a Threads profile has its own downsides. The app also allows users to pre-follow Instagram accounts so they will be on the followers list when those accounts join Threads.