Meta is in the process of developing new features to bring to Threads, the text-based social media app it launched earlier this month. While the Meta team has been since focused on “keeping the lights on and fixing bugs,” it is starting to add “obvious missing features,” head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said in a threads post on July 11. Updates will include a feed dedicated to followed users, the ability to search posts and an edit button.
Calling an edit button “obvious” seems to poke at Twitter, which does not universally offer that feature. Only Twitter users who upgrade to the subscription platform are able to edit their tweets. Threads might be able to pull some Twitter users to its platform if it continues to provide features that Twitter doesn’t make accessible to everyone.
According to the Instagram chief, 100 million people have signed up for Threads, though it is unclear how many are active users. The uptake was “way beyond our expectations,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a threads post. The updates Mosseri announced aren’t groundbreaking, but they do signal Threads is moving into the next phase of its development.
Mosseri’s post received 46,900 likes, the second-most of the two dozen he has published. Meta’s stock is up 6 percent since the company launched Threads, trading today (July 13) at $313 per share.
Who is Adam Mosseri?
Mosseri has worked as the head of Instagram since 2018, succeeding the app’s founders. He joined Meta—then called Facebook—as a product designer a decade earlier. He has worked in various roles at the company, including as vice president of product for Facebook, vice president of product for Instagram and as design director for mobile apps. He rose to prominence at the company after the 2016 U.S. election when he authored press statements addressing “fake news” on the platform. He also had a role in defending Instagram’s targeting practices in the wake of the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Prior to working at Meta, Mosseri was a designer at TokBox, a company providing APIs and other web tools that has since been acquired. He also founded a design firm called Blank Mosseri while studying at New York University in 2003. At the firm, he rendered what the One World Trade Center could look like, according to the New York Times.
He was recognized in Fortune’s 40 Under 40 in Tech list in 2020 and gave the keynote speech at the International Journalism Festival in Italy in 2017.
