Threads is preparing to drop a bomb on X (formerly known as Twitter) with a new feature that displays trending topics. The feature could threaten to put Threads on the path to overtake X in the battle for active users.
The news comes after a Meta (META) -) employee seemed to have accidentally leaked the upcoming feature over the weekend by posting a screenshot on Threads that displayed the top five trending topics users were discussing on the platform. Meta owns Threads.
The original post has since been deleted expeditiously, but it was captured in a screenshot and reposted to Threads by eagle-eyed user Willian Max before its removal.
In the upcoming feature, it appears that the number of threads discussing each trending topic may not be a factor on where it appears on the list of what’s trending. The leaked screenshot shows that “Loki Season 2” was the No. 4 trending topic on the list with 91.K threads, but “Drake - For All The Dogs” seized the top spot with 59.4K threads.
The leak comes after it was reported last month that Threads was struggling to retain users after Meta rolled out the app this summer on July 5, which initially attracted more than 30 million users within the first few hours of its debut. Threads is expected to have 23.7 million active U.S. users monthly by the end of 2023 which puts it behind its competitors such as X, Facebook and TikTok which is raking in more than double the amount of monthly users, according to an Insider Intelligence analysis.
Related: Threads App: Here's Everything We Know About Meta's New Twitter Competitor
Since its debut as a competitor of Elon Musk’s X, Threads has been consistently rolling out new features to make the platform more appealing to users. In August, Threads users gained the ability to share their posts directly to Instagram DMs, add custom alt text to photos and videos and mention other users in a thread by typing in “@” before entering the account name.
In an interview with The Verge last month, Mark Zuckerberg doubled-down on his vision for Threads to be a home for kinder communication.
“I think how we set the culture for Threads early on in terms of being a more positive, friendly place for discussion will hopefully be one of the defining elements for the next decade as we scale it out.” he said.
