Summary
- Meta’s Threads is adding a dedicated ‘Media’ tab to showcase photos and videos, making it easier for users to find and engage with visual content posted by their friends.
- Users can now tag people in their photo posts on Threads, mirroring Instagram’s long-standing functionality.
- Threads also introduced ‘Markup,’ a feature that allows users to add their own visual commentary, including scribbles and highlights, to posts they’re resharing.
Meta’s Threads made headlines when it first launched back in 2023, amassing over 100 million users in its first five days of existence. Riding high on momentum, the platform was the fastest ever to reach the milestone, with OpenAI’s ChatGPT second on the list, taking roughly 2 months to gain 100million users.
Threads’ initial success could largely be attributed to the platform being linked to Instagram, allowing users to sign up/in using their existing credentials. As of today, the platform boasts over 320 million monthly active users, with new features ensuring that the userbase keeps growing.
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The platform gained several long-awaited features last year, including privacy and search-related ones. Now, in an attempt to do more of the same and to further emulate Instagram, Threads is rolling out a feature you would have thought it already had — an option to tag people.
I have the feature available on the latest Threads version 365.0.0.40.109 on Android and on iOS too, alongside the concurrently announced ‘Media’ tab. The former lets you tag anyone on Threads, as long as they allow tags from everyone. The latter, on the other hand, is essentially a filter within your profile that lets visitors see all the photos and videos you have shared, a feature that Instagram head Adam Mosseri describes as “a long overdue request from the community.”
This comes soon after Threads rival X (Twitter) rolled out a dedicated vertical video feed.
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Mosseri’s announcement also refers to a new ‘Markup’ feature that essentially lets users repost a different account’s post with highlights, scribbles, and/or their own commentary, as seen in the embed below.
Account tagging, a dedicated Media tab, and Markup are rolling out to all Threads users globally.
Here’s how you can begin tagging friends in your photos
- Head to Threads and tap the + icon on the bottom bar.
- Tap the Gallery icon and add the desired image.
- Tap the human silhouette icon and ‘tap photo to tag people.’
- Search for the account you want to tag.
- You can move the tag to the desired location within the image.
