Have you been copying and pasting GIFs from the GIPHY website into Threads like a crazy person? Those days are finally over!
People haven’t been shy to point out all of the features that have been missing from Threads since it launched back in July (remember, people, this app is less than four months old). Adam Mosseri and his team have been hard at work adding new features over the last few months to build out its feature set, and today is another day with new features.
In a post on the social media platform, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company is rolling out two new features on Threads today. The first will allow users to access and post GIFs natively on the app. Rather than having to navigate outside of Threads — whether it be to a GIF keyboard, app, or website — users will now be able to use GIFs in their posts, whether it be on their own post or in reply or quote of another post.
Post by @zuckView on Threads
The other feature launching today is the ability to run polls on the platform. Now, if you want to get feedback from people on the app, you can run a poll with multiple options for people to answer. It’s a handy feature for people to actually get usable data rather than having everyone dump a ton of random text into the replies of a post.
Both these features are rolling out to users today. It appears that Threads is making the update directly through its app, and it will not require an update, so you won’t see the prompt to update the app in the Apple or Google app stores. Instead, if you’re trying to get access to the feature, just force close the app and reopen it — eventually, the new features will show up for you when you go to post on the app.
It appears that the rollout is happening gradually, so keep checking throughout the day, and you’ll eventually notice the features magically pop up at some point.
Today’s announcement comes a couple of weeks after the app also rolled out support for editing posts and posting voice recordings. It’s notable that Threads made the edit button free, especially since its main competitor, X (formerly known as Twitter), currently hides the edit button behind its X Premium subscription service that currently costs at least $8 per month.
While the edit button has certainly gotten its fair share of use on the platform, the ability to post a Voice Thread has struggled to gain much traction. People used the feature at first due to the hype and notoriety of its launch, but usage quickly died out. It’s already rare to see anyone actually posting to the platform in the form of audio rather than text. Now, with the ability to use GIFs, I imagine that feature will be even less used.
As Threads rolls out support for GIFs and polls, X also rolled out support for Voice and Audio calls this week. Competition is good!
