Nearly three years after launching as a competitor to Twitter (now X), Threads has reaches 500 million monthly active users, the company announced Tuesday. The Meta-owned social platform also announced a series of new features launching today, including a “Your Algo” tool that lets users control what they see in their feed.

The new Your Algo feature builds on the platform’s “Dear Algo” tool launched in February, which lets users tell Threads what they want to see more or less of in their feed by posting a public post such as, “Dear Algo, show me more posts about podcasts.” With the new Your Algo feature, users can privately control what they see in their feed without having to share a public post.

You can tell Threads you want to see more or less of certain topics and choose how long the request lasts: one, three, or seven days. Only you can see the requests.

Your Algo is rolling out today in the U.S., Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

By allowing users to temporarily influence what appears on their feeds, Threads gains an edge over X and other competitors by offering a feature that isn’t available on rival platforms.

Threads is also bringing “Communities” out of beta and adding new requested features for it. Launched last year as a way to take on X, the feature give users dedicated spaces within the app where they can delve deeper into conversations on topics that matter to them like basketball, television, K-pop, books, and more. Now, users will be able to find communities through a new “Communities Hub.” Additionally, communities now have their own distinct icons to make it easier to spot and recognize them.

“The Discovery Hub is a way for us to try to get communities in front of more people,” Instagram head Connor Hayes told TechCrunch. “We noticed that when folks use the app with a clear purpose and they find their people in the app quickly, it’s just a better experience for them. One of the challenges that they’ve had since we launched that feature over the last year was that it’s hard to organically find the communities that matter to you sometimes. So, the Discovery Hub is a big one.”

Threads also announced that it’s expanding Live Chats to more communities alongside the ability to co-host chats and quote moments to your feed. Launched in April, Live Chats allow for real-time conversations during cultural events like the Fifa World Cup. By July, all communities will be able to start Live Chats.

“One of the positive pieces of feedback that we get from a lot of people about Threads is that they appreciate the quietness of the app in a world where a lot of social is video-centric and loud. And so these Live Chats have been a nice second screen companion experience for people that are watching stuff, but want to follow along with commentary while they do so,” Hayes said.

The expansion of Live Chats will help Threads close the gap with X when it comes to real-time conversations. Unlike X, which has long served as a global “town square” of sorts for breaking news and live events, Threads lagged behind X in terms of relevance and timeliness when it first launched because it lacked many of the features that X had, such as robust search, hashtags, and a chronological feed. However, it has added these features over time, and is now looking to better compete with X through the addition of a feature that even the Elon Musk-owned app doesn’t have.

In terms of the new MAU milestone, it shows that Threads was able to add 100 million monthly users in the past 10 months, as the company said in August 2025 that it had 400 million monthly active users.

Threads’ growth comes as the platform has shipped numerous new features over the past year, such as DMs, ghost posts, desktop messaging, and more.