How to use Threads, and whether it is worth your time
Threads hit 500 million monthly users in June 2026 and now beats X on mobile daily actives. Meta documents its ranking system in more detail than most people realise — and almost none of the advice online comes from that document.
8 minute read
What Threads is now, three years in
Threads launched in July 2023 as a text-first companion to Instagram and has since become a network with its own habits. Meta announced 500 million monthly active users in June 2026, up from 400 million ten months earlier. Similarweb's mobile measurement, reported by TechCrunch, put Threads at 147 million daily active users in July 2026, up 21.3% year on year, against 123.7 million for X, which was down 7%. On mobile daily usage at least, Threads is now the bigger habit. It remains primarily a text feed — short posts, replies, reposts — with images, links and video attached, and the culture leans toward conversation and commentary rather than broadcast. If you only know it from the launch week in 2023, it is a materially different app now.
The Instagram coupling, and what it costs you
Threads still requires an Instagram account to sign up, and your Threads handle is your Instagram handle. That was the whole growth strategy: Meta seeded a new network with an existing follow graph, and you can import your Instagram follows in a couple of taps. The upside is genuine if your audience is already on Instagram, because you start with a warm list instead of zero. The cost is that Threads inherits Instagram's identity, so a Threads presence is not a hedge against anything happening to your Instagram account. The original complaint that deleting Threads also deleted Instagram was fixed in December 2023, and you can now delete or deactivate the Threads profile on its own from settings. The handles stay linked, which is the part people keep missing.
What Meta actually documents about ranking
Most Threads algorithm articles recite the same six or seven ranking signals with no source attached. Meta's Transparency Center has a page for the Threads feed that is considerably more specific than any of them. It describes an AI system that gathers public posts plus everything from accounts you follow, then scores each candidate on eight predictions: how likely you are to like it, to scroll past, to tap the profile, to move from that post to the next, to write a reply, to click the post, to visit the author's profile, and to click and then like. The behaviour windows feeding those predictions run from one hour to eighty-four days. Nothing there concerns hashtags, posting time or word count. Replies and profile visits account for three of the eight predictions, which is why they matter.
The one documented change worth planning around
In November 2024, Adam Mosseri said Threads was rebalancing ranking to favour content from accounts you already follow, and told creators directly to expect unconnected reach to fall and connected reach to rise. That is unusually plain for a platform announcement, and it has held since. The practical consequence is that Threads is not a cold-start discovery machine the way TikTok is. A post that nobody in your existing audience engages with is unlikely to be rescued by recommendations. It also means follower quality outranks follower count here: two thousand people who reply will out-reach twenty thousand who scroll. If you are arriving from short-form video and expecting the recommendation feed to do the work for you, adjust that expectation before you judge your first month.
Communities, Your Algo, and the 2026 feature run
Threads has shipped a lot recently and most published guides predate it. TechCrunch reported ghost posts in October 2025: a post that disappears after 24 hours, with replies routed to your DMs rather than the public thread. February 2026 brought Dear Algo, where you publicly ask the feed for more of a topic; in June 2026 Meta added a private version called Your Algo that dials a topic up or down for one, three or seven days, launching first in the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand. Communities left beta the same month with a discovery hub and live chats. Native scheduling has been available to everyone since January 2025. The direction is consistent: more explicit user control over the feed, and more reasons to stay inside a conversation.
The fediverse connection, and where it actually stands
Threads posts can federate out to Mastodon and the wider ActivityPub network, which sounds more consequential than it currently is. Sharing is opt-in and off by default. As of Meta's June 2025 expansion, you get a dedicated fediverse feed inside the Following tab, profile search across federated servers, and the ability to follow accounts there, with fediverse replies appearing under your posts. What you still cannot do is reply to a fediverse post from inside Threads. Meta has also not committed to account portability, which is the feature that would make federation mean something — the ability to leave and keep your audience. Until that exists, treat the integration as a small extra distribution surface, not as decentralisation in any sense that protects you from Meta.
Video on Threads: what fits and what does not
Threads accepts video up to five minutes, longer than Reels or Shorts allow, and it shows landscape as readily as vertical. Published file-size caps disagree — third-party spec pages quote anything from 500MB to a full gigabyte — so keep exports lean rather than trusting any single number. The more useful constraint is the feed itself, not the limit. Threads is read as a text feed with media inside it, so a clip competes with posts that can be consumed in two seconds. Burn your captions in and assume sound is off. In practice a 30 to 60 second cut, with a strong opening line of text above it, does more work than a five-minute upload, and the text you write around the video matters at least as much as the video.
Does Threads deserve your time?
The honest answer splits cleanly. If your audience is already on Instagram, Threads is the cheapest extra channel available to you: the account exists, the follow graph imports, and the posts are short enough to write between other work. That combination is rare, and it makes Threads worth a real attempt rather than a token one. If your audience is not on Instagram, the case is much weaker — you would be building a graph from scratch on a network where recommendations deliberately do less of the lifting. There is no creator payout attached to Threads, so treat it as a place for conversations that send people toward work you host elsewhere. If you are already cutting long recordings into clips, adding a captioned 30 to 60 second version costs one export. FrameOS can produce those alongside your vertical cuts — 300 credits for 3 days · no card.
FAQ
Do you need an Instagram account to use Threads?
Yes. Signing up for Threads still requires an Instagram account, and your Threads handle is your Instagram handle. You can import your Instagram follows when you join. Since December 2023 you can delete or deactivate your Threads profile on its own without touching Instagram, but the two handles remain linked while both exist.
How does the Threads algorithm decide what you see?
Meta's Transparency Center describes an AI system that collects public posts plus everything from accounts you follow, then ranks them using eight predictions — including how likely you are to like, reply, scroll past, click the post, or visit the author's profile. Behaviour windows range from one hour to eighty-four days. The Following feed is chronological and excludes recommendations.
Is Threads connected to Mastodon?
Partly. Fediverse sharing is opt-in and off by default. Since June 2025 you get a fediverse feed in the Following tab, can search federated profiles and follow accounts there, and see fediverse replies to your posts. You still cannot reply to a fediverse post from Threads, and Meta has not committed to account portability.
How many people use Threads?
Meta announced 500 million monthly active users in June 2026, up from 400 million ten months earlier. On mobile daily usage, Similarweb measured 147 million daily actives in July 2026, growing 21.3% year on year, compared with 123.7 million for X. By that measure Threads is now the larger daily app.
Sources
- Instagram Threads Feed AI system · Meta Transparency Center
- Threads adjusts its algorithm to show you more content from accounts you follow · TechCrunch
- Threads adds new personalization and community features as it reaches 500M monthly users · TechCrunch
- Threads expands open social web integrations with fediverse feed, user profile search · TechCrunch
- Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app · TechCrunch
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