Threads, an online social media and social networking service launched by Meta, has begun the expansion of the “search” feature to the US, United Kingdom, Mexico, Argentina, and India, as part of efforts to increase engagements.
The company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this on the Threads platform where he wrote, “Rolling out to most English and Spanish speaking countries today. More to come soon”.
The rollout of the search feature to other countries is coming after Threads initially began testing the feature in Australia and New Zealand in August.
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It is however worth noting that while Threads had incorporated a search tab since its launch, the initial iteration only allowed users to search for other users.
However, this limited search did not meet the extensive demands of users looking to search for keywords or specific topics, a capability that is standard on platforms like Twitter and several other apps.
In a bid to enhance user engagement, Threads now allows users to search for posts and specific keywords and topics discussed on the platform.
This expansion of the search feature is part of Threads’ efforts to make the app more engaging for users. At launch, Threads had an impressive start, quickly reaching 100 million users, thanks to the clever way it leveraged Instagram’s social graph to onboard new users.
However, the platform’s hype seems to have fizzled away, after it recorded a significant decline of user sign-ups and engagements.
On its launch day, Threads users opened the app an average of 14 times and spent around 19 minutes scrolling through it. However, by August 1, these figures had sharply declined. The daily average time spent on Threads fell to a meager 2.9 minutes, and users only engaged in 2.6 sessions per day
In August, Mobile intelligence firm Sensor Tower reported that Threads’ daily active users had dropped 82% since its launch, and there were now just 8 million users accessing the app daily.
To address the decline in user engagement, Threads rolled out more features like search, as well as the web version. Meanwhile, this had only little impact in attracting more users to the platform. Data from digital intelligence firm, Similarweb, disclosed that traffic bump from the Web app launch was only 3% on a global basis.
Threads continues to face a significant challenge in retaining users and maintaining engagement, analysts suggest that Meta must adopt a strategic approach to address these issues.
The company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, had already hinted that the platform has been pushing for new features to improve retention rates. Last month, he told employees that he considered the drop in active users to be “normal,” adding that things would likely improve as the app added more features.