Instagram Threads finally adding yet another basic feature as it tries to lure people back

In this photo illustration, the Threads logo is displayed on a cell phone on July 05, 2023 in San Anselmo, California (Getty Images)

Threads is finally adding yet another basic piece of functionality, as it attempts to keep users coming back.

Meta launched Threads in July, seemingly in a rush to capitalise on particular problems at Elon Musk’s rival Twitter. It appeared to pay off, with the app quickly becoming the fastest growing in history, hitting 100 million users in just five days.

But the speed meant that a variety of important features were missing, include a web version of the app and search functionality. In the time since, the user numbers of Threads appear to have fallen off, presumably partly in frustration at the lack of features on the app.

Now Threads is adding the latter, so that people will be able to look for posts containing keywords. That functionality is already readily available on Twitter, as well as the main Instagram app.

“Get excited – search is coming to Threads,” he wrote on the site, along with a n image of Vin Diesel reading “I bet you gonna enjoy this”.

Threads also launched without a following-only feed, allowing people to circumvent the app’s algorithm, which tends to highlight posts from companies rather than people a user follows. That functionality has also been added recently.

In the time since it was launched, Meta has been adding many of those features into Threads. Even still, they do not seem to be stopping people leaving the site: the recent introduction of a web version of Threads did little to attract more users, data suggests.