Hoping to quell some of the momentum behind social network Bluesky, a competitor to X and Meta’s Threads, Meta is developing a feature that takes inspiration from one of Bluesky’s more popular additions: the concept of “Starter Packs,” or hand-curated lists of suggested users that help newcomers find people to follow. Meta’s version of these Starter Packs will also suggest profiles that are “handpicked by people on Threads,” according to screenshots of the feature, which is still in development.
Unlike Threads, which is built off the back of Instagram’s existing social graph, Bluesky needed a way to quickly and easily connect new users to others in its community whose posts they may find interesting. Instead of importing users’ address books, the startup introduced the concept of “Starter Packs,” which are curated lists of recommended users that anyone in the community can make.
These lists can center around topics of interest, geographies, industries, fan groups, languages, or anything else.
The feature has become so popular there are now websites that organize everyone’s Bluesky Starter Packs into a searchable database. Starter Packs can also often be found shared by others in the Bluesky feed and are available as a tab on users’ profiles. (There’s also a TechCrunch Starter Pack!)
Of course, Threads doesn’t necessarily need to create a Starter Pack-like feature, since it’s already able to connect users to accounts they follow on Instagram and can leverage other signals from Meta’s family of apps to infer users’ interests when suggesting others to follow in Threads’ user interface.
However, Meta may feel threatened by how popular the process of building and sharing Starter Packs has become on Bluesky, allowing people to instantly form connections and feel a part of a growing community.
Technologist and reverse engineer Chris Messina recently discovered that Threads appears to be designing its own Starter Pack alternative. The feature can be accessed by entering a string of code in Safari on iOS that points to a new feature called “Recommended Follow Lists.”
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/27/m...oping-its-own-take-on-blueskys-starter-packs/
Unlike Threads, which is built off the back of Instagram’s existing social graph, Bluesky needed a way to quickly and easily connect new users to others in its community whose posts they may find interesting. Instead of importing users’ address books, the startup introduced the concept of “Starter Packs,” which are curated lists of recommended users that anyone in the community can make.
These lists can center around topics of interest, geographies, industries, fan groups, languages, or anything else.
The feature has become so popular there are now websites that organize everyone’s Bluesky Starter Packs into a searchable database. Starter Packs can also often be found shared by others in the Bluesky feed and are available as a tab on users’ profiles. (There’s also a TechCrunch Starter Pack!)
Of course, Threads doesn’t necessarily need to create a Starter Pack-like feature, since it’s already able to connect users to accounts they follow on Instagram and can leverage other signals from Meta’s family of apps to infer users’ interests when suggesting others to follow in Threads’ user interface.
However, Meta may feel threatened by how popular the process of building and sharing Starter Packs has become on Bluesky, allowing people to instantly form connections and feel a part of a growing community.
Technologist and reverse engineer Chris Messina recently discovered that Threads appears to be designing its own Starter Pack alternative. The feature can be accessed by entering a string of code in Safari on iOS that points to a new feature called “Recommended Follow Lists.”
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/27/m...oping-its-own-take-on-blueskys-starter-packs/