What to know
- Threads rolls out a ‘Trending Now’ section for U.S. users, available on the ‘Search’ page and the ‘For You’ feed.
- Trending Now will highlight up to 5 popular and trending topics that users are interacting with on that day.
- Threads is leveraging machine learning AI systems to determine trending topics and has a dedicated content team to review the results.
Threads users in the U.S. have started seeing a new ‘Trending Now’ section in their feed. This is where users will find hot topics that are spurring a growing conversation on the platform. Trending Now is integrated into the search page as well as your For You feed.
Threads is using AI systems to determine the most popular topics based on user engagement and interaction. Users will see up to 5 trending topics in the ‘Trending Now’ section. Selecting a topic will redirect the user to the search results for that topic. Do note, however, that the topics are not personalized to you, even though they may appear in your ‘For You’ feed.
Threads maintains that the trending topics won’t be limited to stories and the AI systems will pull from a broader pool of stories that people are actively engaging with. Beyond that, Threads has a dedicated team of content specialists to review the topics and ensure they don’t violate community guidelines, “and that themes are not duplicative, nonsensical, or misleading”.
It’s no secret that Threads has been in direct competition with X (formerly Twitter) since the former’s inception. The introduction of the ‘Trending Now’ feature, which is basically a dedicated breaking news section, now takes it one step closer to being a facsimile of its rival. At the same time, the feature will aid users in discovering new content quickly and without having to resort to ‘tags’.
