While Meta lures TikTok creators to Instagram and Facebook with cash bonuses, its Instagram competitor X Threads is now making things easier for creators, brands and others who need more professional tools to manage their presence in the application. On Thursday, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced a handful of new features coming to Threads, including a way to schedule posts and see more metrics within Insights.
In a post on the social network, Mosseri shared that users will now be able to schedule posts in Threads and view metrics for individual posts within the Insights dashboard. This provides a way for Threads users to track trends, including their views, number of followers and geographic demographics, number and type of interactions, and more, over a period of time.
In addition, he said Threads is adding a new feature that allows users to “flag” a post they’re resharing in order to include their own creative thinking. While Mosseri didn’t elaborate on what that means or share an example, previous findings from tech enthusiast Chris Messina indicate that Threads will add a new icon next to buttons for adding photos, GIFs, sound, hashtags, and more that provide access to this feature.
The squiggle icon, when clicked, takes users to a screen where they can choose between tools like the highlighter pen or the arrow tool, which will allow them to draw directly on a Thread post. This feature was also spotted last week by Lindsey Gamble, who posted on Threads to show the feature in action.
It’s kind of an odd addition to Threads, given that users more often than not share something clipped from the web, like a news article, where they’ve added a highlight or underline to a screenshot. There hasn’t been much consumer demand for a tool to directly mark Threads posts.
However, the feature offers Threads users something unique when compared to social network rivals like X, Bluesky and Mastodon – and that may be the point.
