Instagram’s Threads Expands Keywords, Topic Suggestions To India

Instagram’s Threads app is expanding its ability to search for keywords and topic suggestions for Indian users. It will also offer the same feature to the US, the UK, Argentina, Mexico and other English and Spanish-speaking countries.

This feature will enable users to search for posts based on specific topics on the platform. Users can tap on an icon, enter a keyword or phrase into the search bar and check for relevant threads. 

The tech giant started testing the feature for users in Australia and New Zealand in August.

Announcing the new feature rollout, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on Threads that the new feature will be available in ‘most English and Spanish speaking countries’ soon.

“Once we feel like we’re in a very good place on that, then I’m highly confident that we’re going to be able to pour enough gasoline on this to help it grow,” Zuckerberg added. The feature will be available on both the Threads mobile app and the recently launched web platform.

The feature comes as part of Meta’s efforts to pull people to the Threads app after the app faced a recent decline in the number of active users.

The app, which links a user’s Instagram account, was launched by Meta in July to compete with X (Twitter at the time) and offers a Twitter-like experience for Instagram users.

At the time of launch, Indian users made up a third of the app’s total global downloads, according to a report by data.ai. The report revealed that India led the users index with 33%, followed by Brazil with 22%, the US with 16%, Mexico with 8% and Japan with 5% downloads.

Within just 10 days, Threads crossed 150 Mn users globally. Further, the data.ai report revealed that Threads garnered one-fifth of Twitter’s global weekly active user base. However, in August, the app saw an 82% decline in active users and was left with 8 Mn daily users, CNN reported.

Before the latest update to Threads, Meta also launched a web version of the app, access to view posts by following accounts chronologically and a reposting option, among other features.

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