This excerpt from “Sources” by Alex Heath, a newsletter exploring AI and the tech world, is shared exclusively with subscribers of The Verge each week.

Meta’s Threads app has enjoyed remarkable success this past year, reportedly becoming the second most-downloaded iOS app on Apple’s platform, right after ChatGPT. The app boasts 400 million monthly active users, with 150 million logging in daily.

Much of Threads’ growth is fueled by Meta’s existing platforms. “We put significant effort into Instagram and Facebook to highlight what’s happening on Threads,” said Connor Hayes, the head of Threads. The strategy involves integrating personalized Threads content into Instagram and Facebook feeds to encourage app downloads. The aim is to gradually reduce users’ reliance on these prompts, making the app a natural part of their routine. “We work hard to help users transition from needing those promotions to waking up and instinctively opening the app,” Hayes elaborated.

Since taking the helm in September, Hayes, who played a key role in the app’s initial launch, has been focused on defining Threads’ unique identity. He described the platform’s mission to be “the go-to destination for discussing world events online.” This involves strategically targeting various sectors—such as sports, entertainment, and news—to encourage both content creators and audiences to engage more with the app.

In terms of competition, Hayes is keeping an eye on more than just X. “Reddit sees a lot of activity similar to Twitter’s early days,” he remarked. “Discord hosts large, community-driven group chats.” While he recognized Twitter, now X, as “the app that pioneered the core format,” Hayes emphasized that the space for real-time conversation is increasingly competitive.

A traffic channel for creators

There’s no direct monetization for creators on Threads right now. Hayes is pitching something different: Threads as a traffic channel to other platforms where creators actually get paid.

The clearest example is podcasts. Threads recently launched a feature that renders show and episode links from platforms like Spotify and lets users pin them to their profiles. Hayes said Threads is open to other partnerships with platforms like Substack and Patreon as well. But there’s no plan to let creators paywall content directly on Threads or to share ad revenue like YouTube.

Ads are coming, but slowly

Meanwhile, Threads is testing ads in four countries, including the US, but the load is deliberately light, Hayes told me. “We are ramping the ad load up steadily over the course of the next year,” he said, “but only doing it when we feel like there’s enough value on the consumer side of the app to justify doing that.”

Controlling the algorithm

Threads is testing a new feature called “Dear Algo” in a handful of countries. Users can ask to see more or less of a topic, share their algorithm prompt for others to use or remix, and have their personalized feed adjust to the prompt for three days. “After a heartbreaking loss of your sports team, you can be like, don’t show me NFL content for three days,” Hayes said. “But you’ll be ready on day four to come back in.”

The broader point: content understanding has gotten better thanks to LLMs. “We now don’t just know that a thing is about basketball. We know that it’s the 1998 NBA Finals, and it’s this player taking a shot for this team.” That precision is what makes this kind of algorithm steering possible. Hayes has been surprised by how specific early user requests are with prompts like, “show me more football content, but not Patrick Mahomes.”

The fediverse is on maintenance mode

Threads still supports federation with other apps like Mastodon, but Hayes was clear that it’s not a top priority for the current roadmap. “It’s something that we’re supporting, it’s something that we’re maintaining, but it’s not the thing that we’re talking about that’s gonna help the app break out,” he said.

“As someone who has built a zillion consumer products, it’s just really hard to keep these divergent platforms and products consistent on the same protocol over time,” he explained. “There’s always going to be the trade-offs that these companies are thinking about of how much energy do I want to pour into compatibility with this ecosystem versus iterating on this thing I’m building and seeing what’s valuable.”

Prioritizing timeliness but not news

Threads used to be mocked for how it would surface old content. Now, the app prioritizes recommending content from the last 24 hours, according to Hayes. “If something is four or five days old, even if it’s really good, we probably won’t show that.”

Unlike X, Hayes said Threads isn’t making a push to get more journalists and publishers on the app. “We just look at it like any other vertical, which is that there are certain creators who are really good at this and know a lot about it. There are consumers who are ravenous to consume the content.” He said Threads isn’t downranking news, but it’s “not one of the focus verticals right now.”