It seems that Threads is still a little spooked by the sudden rise of Bluesky, with the Meta-owned app now copying another Bluesky element in “Starter Packs”.
On Bluesky, Starter Packs are curated, topic-based lists of people to follow, which are designed to make it easier for newcomers to populate their feed.
And while Threads isn’t calling its version “Starter Packs” it may as well.
As you can see in these examples, Threads’ take own Starter Packs will be shown to new users, and within your “For You” feed, and will recommend listings that have been curated by Threads users.
As explained by Threads:
“Starting this week, you may see occasional suggestions to follow multiple profiles from custom feeds curated by a few members of the Threads community in the U.S. We’re testing this experience with a small number of threaders to start, but everyone on Threads in the U.S. will be able to see and follow the profiles included in these collections.”
It’s essentially what Twitter users would know as “Lists”, which makes it easier to find users to follow based on a topic, and can be very helpful in building your initial in-app experience.
And with Threads now also letting some users default to the “Following” feed (also like Bluesky), following the right profiles becomes even more important, as opposed to relying on the algorithm to show you content that you might like via the “For You” display.
So it does make sense for Threads to add custom lists, while it also recently added the option to swipe across to alternative, custom feeds from the main UI, making it even easier to access and utilize this element.
There’s definitely practical value here, but it is interesting to see just how freaked out Threads is about Bluesky, to the point that it’s replicating virtually all of Bluesky’s features to dilute any potential competition.
Which is a tactic that Meta has used repeatedly to do exactly that. Replicating Snapchat’s Stories feature on Instagram, for example, halted Snapchat’s growth for some time, while replicating TikTok, with Reels, also seems to have slowed TikTok’s expansion, especially among older users.
So it works, but while Bluesky has seen a rise of late, it only has 24 million users in total, versus 275 million on Threads.
So Threads isn’t even giving Bluesky much of a chance to gain traction, before nullifying it through replication. I guess, if Meta wants to become the leader in the real-time social space, it needs to fend off any potential competitor, but really, Bluesky’s going to have enough of its own troubles growing to even make it far enough to be a real threat in this respect.
So, Meta’s looking to kill off Bluesky, with almost all of Bluesky’s features now available on Threads as well.
Though one of the real lures of Bluesky, for key proponents at least, is that Bluesky doesn’t penalize links, and encourages discussion on any topic. Threads is not overly friendly to link posts, while it also actively restricts political speech.
If Threads changes these elements, that would be a big step in really negating Bluesky’s expansion.
