Threads hits 500 million users, and adds a feed control even X doesn’t have

Meta’s Threads has crossed 500 million monthly users, the company said on Tuesday, almost exactly three years after it launched to chase Elon Musk’s X.

That is 100 million more than last August, and it puts Mark Zuckerberg halfway to the 1 billion-user goal he set on day one.

Alongside the milestone, Threads is shipping a feature its rival does not have. ‘Your Algo’ lets you privately tell the app to show you more or less of a topic, for one, three or seven days.

It builds on February’s ‘Dear Algo’, which did the same thing but only through a public post. Your Algo keeps the request to yourself, and is rolling out first in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, in keeping with Threads’ staggered regional approach, which saw it reach the EU months after its US debut.

Leaning into communities and live chat

Meta is also taking Threads ‘Communities’, topic spaces for the likes of 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 rivals are making: Bluesky has built its own strategy around group chats and communities.

Its Live Chats feature, real-time threads pinned to events such as the World Cup, will reach every community by July. Threads boss Connor Hayes framed it as a ‘second screen’ that suits the app’s quieter feel ‘in a world where a lot of social is video-centric and loud’.

Together, the moves target the one thing X still does better: timeliness. Threads launched without search, hashtags or a chronological feed, and has spent two years bolting them on, right down to desktop direct messages. The algo controls and live chats are its bid to finally out-host X on real-time conversation, while keeping a calmer tone.

The numbers Meta isn’t sharing

The 500 million figure is monthly users, the flattering metric. Meta will not give a current daily-active number, the one that shows real engagement, and the last it disclosed was 150 million, back in October.

It says daily users are ‘growing strongly’, and that growth is now more organic, with more people opening Threads directly rather than tapping through from Instagram. It also points to Asia, where time spent is up 80 per cent in South Korea and 130 per cent in Japan year on year, and notes that BTS just joined, gaining 4.2 million followers in days.

The context matters: external trackers had recently estimated Threads’ base was shrinking, so Meta’s growth claim is partly a rebuttal. And the app still does not make meaningful money. It added ads in 200 countries this year, but Meta’s finance chief said in April that Threads will not be a ‘meaningful driver’ of revenue in 2026.

There is a limit to the new control, too. Your Algo requests deliberately expire after a week, so Meta keeps the final say over your feed. You can nudge the algorithm, but you cannot take the wheel, unlike on Bluesky, which has leaned into handing users full control of theirs.