Meta grants new features to Threads and Instagram

Both social media companies have tweaked their platforms to improve user experience.

Instagram allows location sharing

Instagram will now allow users to share their location with friends through direct messages. Similar tracking features exist with Apple’s Find My, Whatsapp’s Share Live Location and Snapchat’s Snap Map.

However, unlike Apple, Snapchat and WhatsApp (which is also owned by Meta), which allow users to share location for up to 24 hours at a time, Instagram will only allow sharing for one hour. Users can share their location with a single person or a group conversation, and only the people in that chat will be able to see where they are. The location cannot be forwarded to other chats.

Instagram has also updated the app to allow users to customize names in direct messages by adding nicknames for themselves or others.

Last week, the social network said it is testing the ability for users to reset their recommendations. People will be able to start their algorithm from scratch and retrain it to show content they like. Once a user resets their Instagram recommendations, content will begin to customize again over time based on the posts and accounts the user interacts with.

Threads updates its feeds

Meta Threads announced that it is implementing a redesign that keeps users’ feeds visible on the home screen. The redesign allows a user to quickly switch from one feed to another, similar to a feature on X. The change rolled out on Android this week and will launch on iOS in the coming days.

“Following is now just a swipe away, and you can easily swipe between any of your custom feeds,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced on Wednesday. “This may look like a small change, but it should make navigating the app much simpler.”

Threads has been rolling out other updates over the past few weeks. Last week, it launched custom feeds to allow people to organize feeds around specific topics or certain user profiles. It will now also show more content from followers in the app’s algorithmic ‘For You’ feed in response to complaints from users who wanted to see less content from people they don’t follow. The social network is also working on a feature similar to Bluesky’s ‘Starter Packs,’ which are selected lists of recommended users that people can follow when they first join the application.

All these changes come at a time when Bluesky is growing, surpassing 15 million users in November, with spikes following major events such as the U.S. presidential election and the X ban in Brazil.