The update includes a few changes, like the ability to add custom background colors to your messages, support for the recently released iOS 17 public beta, and Threads update iOS 17 various bug fixes.
Adam Mosseri announced a list of features and changes that the new build of Instagram brings, including the critical update of being able to use the app on iOS 17 without crashing. Additionally, there are smaller quality-of-life improvements such as a chronological feed, an edit button, multiple account support, and the ability to search posts.
The app update introduces new features like double-tapping the search tab to start a search, expanding pics on profiles, and supporting extra tall photos which are fully visible. It also features a newly polished “facepill pill” (the display of a list of people that appears at the top of the screen when there are new posts to read), as well as various bug fixes.
Threads have improved its scroll dismiss handling on profiles and fixed random images on the thread line (Threads’ word for the timeline). Roth also reported fixing other, smaller bugs. Additionally, the binary size of the app has been reduced.
The engineer commented on other users’ questions about desired features, stating that alt text – an accessibility feature for low-vision and blind users that adds text to describe photos – will be available soon, and users will be able to see an indicator as to whether they are following someone in their follower’s section next week.
Adam Roth reiterated Threads’ plans to introduce a Follow Feed, as Adam Mosseri had promised, and noted that they were making “continuous improvements” in other areas of accessibility and the main algorithm. When asked about the lack of a desktop version, Roth replied that it’s not as simple as “turning it on.” He stated that it “didn’t exist and needs to be built”.
Meta took advantage of Twitter’s chaos by launching Threads while it was still a work in progress. The confusion was caused by Elon Musk’s decision to limit the number of viewable tweets, citing an increase in data scraping activity. For now, it appears that change is further down the road.
Musk increased the pricing for Twitter’s API, causing some developers to be unable to afford Twitter’s data, which prompted an increase in scraping. This caused other Twitter alternatives, such as decentralized Twitter rival Mastodon, to gain traction. Mastodon’s monthly active users rose from 1.4 million in early June to 1.9 million as of June 11.
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Yesterday, Eugen Rochko, founder and CEO of Mastodon, increased a post that announced the platform had reached 2 million monthly active users – a sign that people are still leaving Twitter. He had previously commented on the surge in early July, mentioning that active users had grown by 294K over the weekend and posting activity had tripled.
Threads plan to integrate with the decentralized social networking protocol ActivityPub in the future, enabling users to transfer their profiles from Threads to other ActivityPub-connected servers and interact with and follow other Mastodon users. In response to reports of traffic declines, Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino asserted, without metrics, that Twitter experienced its largest usage day since February last week.
