Meta’s Threads has surpassed 500 million monthly users, the company announced Tuesday, nearly three years after it launched to compete with Elon Musk’s X. That’s 100 million more than last August and puts Mark Zuckerberg halfway to the 1 billion user goal he set from day one.
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Alongside this milestone, Threads is offering a feature that its competitor doesn't have. 'Your Algo' lets you privately tell the app to show you more or less of a topic, for one, three or seven days. This feature builds on February's 'Dear Algo', which did the same thing but only via a public post. 'Your Algo' keeps the request to yourself and is initially rolling out in the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand, in line with Threads' gradual regional approach, which saw it reach the EU months after its US launch.
Meta is also bringing Threads' "Communities," thematic spaces for topics like basketball, K-pop, and books, out of beta, with a discovery hub to help people find them and badges for top contributors. The company credits communities for "all" of its recent daily user growth, the same bet that competitors are making: Bluesky has built its own strategy around group chats and communities.
The 'Live Chats' feature, real-time conversations tied to events like the World Cup, will be rolling out to every community by July. Threads' head Connor Hayesdescribed it as a 'second screen' that fits the app's quieter feel 'in a world where social media is video-centric and noisy'.
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These moves are aimed at the one thing X still does best: timeliness. Threads started without search, hashtags, or a timeline, and spent two years adding them, even instant messaging for desktop. The algorithm checks and live chats are its attempt to finally surpass X in real-time conversation while maintaining a more relaxed tone.
The 500 million figure refers to monthly users. Meta won't give a current number of daily active users, the measure of true engagement, and the last it revealed was 150 million in October. It says daily users are "growing strongly," and that growth is now more organic, with more people opening Threads directly rather than going through Instagram.
He also points to Asia, where time spent has increased by 80% in South Korea and 130% in Japan year-on-year, and notes that BTS has just joined in, gaining 4.2 million followers in a matter of days.
Context matters: Outside observers have recently estimated that Threads’s user base is shrinking, so Meta’s growth claim is partly a response. And the app still isn’t generating any significant revenue. It added ads in 200 countries this year, but Meta’s CFO said in April that Threads wouldn’t be a “significant driver” of revenue in 2026.
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There's also a limit to the new control. 'Your Algo' requests intentionally expire after a week so that Meta retains final say over your feed. You can give the algorithm a nudge, but you can't take the wheel, unlike Bluesky, which is focused on giving users complete control over their feed.
