11 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Meta’s new Threads update promises new features, but doesn’t say what they are.

“You asked, we answered,” Meta wrote in the notes for an iOS update released on Monday. “New features coming, so keep an eye out as you browse the latest version of the app.”

I don’t see any obvious differences in my updated version of the app. But Instagram boss Adam Mosseri teased a “following” feed in a video, so hopefully that’s coming soon. (Meta, I’m also begging you for a way to look at my feeds on the web.)

A screenshot of the latest Threads update note. The update note says: “You asked, we answered. New features coming, so keep an eye out as you browse the latest version of the app.”
Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
Mia Sato
Mia Sato
Instagram subscriptions are coming to more regions.

Creators in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain and the UK will soon be able to make money through Instagram subscriptions.

Other platforms like TikTok have also introduced ways for creators to charge fans for exclusive content as creator fund money dries up.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Mark Zuckerberg says that tens of millions of people are returning to Threads every day.

That’s “way ahead” of what the company expected, he said on Threads. As for what’s coming next, the company is working on “improving the basics and retention” this year, and then “we’ll focus on growing the community.”

Threads surpassed 100 million users just days after it launched this month.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
You might see more rate limits on Threads.

That’s because of an increase in “spam attacks,” according to Instagram head Adam Mosseri. I’m guessing these limits won’t affect too many people, though — unlike Twitter’s rate limits.

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
What if the next big social media app... is nothing?

Enjoyed this Bloomberg story about the possibility that we are all old and tired, sick of seeing each other’s bad posts, and hoping to touch grass:

In 2022, according to GWI’s latest report, daily time spent [online] fell by 13 minutes. It’s now six hours and 43 minutes a day, slightly lower than it was in 2017. The drop was the biggest since the company started tracking the topic and suggested, as GWI’s report put it, “that we’ve reached a kind of internet saturation point.”

I guess I’m not the only one who’s been seasoning their cast iron!

Nilay Patel
Nilay Patel
Threads will (obviously) come to the web, says Adam Mosseri.

Mosseri ran through the now familiar list of upcoming Threads features (edit button, following feed) in his weekly video, but added “web presence” to the list, which, well obviously that’s coming. But hey, here’s a prompt: fascinating that after all these attempts to run mobile apps on laptops that “web version” is 100 percent synonymous with “desktop,” right?

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Easily make threads in Threads with three taps.

As shown by Instagram boss Adam Mosseri in a 💎 Hidden Gems 💎 thread (I’m just bringing over his emoji usage here), if you tap return three times in a row while composing a Threads post, you can make another post in the thread. I think it’s a really clever feature, and it’s one of my favorite features of the app.

He’s got a few other handy tricks in the full thread, though you can also see them all on video on his Instagram page.

A screenshot of Jay Peters’ Threads account making two Threads posts on an iPhone.
Does anyone have a better username idea for me? Many expected variations of my name are taken or unavailable. This one is silly but I’m guessing I’ll be tired of it in a month or two.
Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Threads was the top free iPhone app last week.

According to Apple’s weekly app rankings, Threads was the most popular free app for the week ending July 9th. That’s not all too surprising, given that Threads has already garnered over 100 million users since launching last week.

Threads was the number one free app last week, followed by Temu and Remini.
Threads was the number one free app last week, followed by Temu and Remini.
Sceenshot: Andrew Webster / The Verge
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
The Threads team will be shipping improvements “this week,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri says.

He didn’t say specifically what features you can expect imminently, but the team is working on things like “a following feed, the edit button, and post search.”

An edit button you can use for free. Imagine that!

Mia Sato
Mia Sato
More ways to post at the post factory.

Instagram is reportedly developing a way for users to add story highlights to posts, per app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi.

Highlights, the pinned collections of Stories, are a way to organize posts around a certain topic — but can get lost in shuffle once they’re saved. There’s also no quick way to reshare highlights right now.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Here’s how your Threads feed works right now.

According to the @threadsapp account, you’ll see both people you follow and accounts the platform recommends to you. Changes are coming down the line: recommendations will be “more personalized” and yes, the Threads team is working on a chronological feed. Search will get better, too.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Meta’s CTO is doing an AMA later today.

Andrew Bosworth, aka Boz, is hosting an AMA session at 7PM ET / 4PM PT. I’m not quite sure if it’s happening on Threads or on Instagram — seems like Instagram? — but given that Threads has become an early hit, I’m guessing he’ll have some interesting things to say no matter where he’s actually going to be answering questions.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Apple’s Phil Schiller is on Threads.

9to5Mac confirmed with Schiller himself that @philipschiller007 is indeed his real account, and he’s already made a few posts on the platform. Apple Music, Apple News, Apple Books, Shazam, and Beats are on Meta’s new social network, too, though Beats is the only one that’s posted anything.

Still, it’s interesting that Apple has its eyes on Threads at all, especially given that Meta and Apple are about to go head-to-head in virtual reality. (Full disclosure: I stole this joke from Nilay.)

I wonder if Tim Cook will eventually join. He posts every once in a while on Twitter, and apparently told Elon Musk last year that Apple “never considered” removing Twitter — will Cook make the move to Threads?

Wes Davis
Wes Davis
Instagram Threads bosses Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri are just beside themselves.

The two posted on Threads today, with Zuckerberg posting that the march to 100 million users of the new Twitter clone over the last five days has been mostly organic.

Mosseri, who heads up Instagram, said in a post he can’t wrap his mind around the platform’s early success. Mosseri has previously said that ads are an eventual “champagne problem.” One wonders if the company might not be ready to pop the cork sooner than expected.

Instagram’s Threads surpasses 100 million usersInstagram’s Threads surpasses 100 million users
Jay Peters and Jon Porter
David Pierce
David Pierce
What’s next for Threads after being the fastest-growing app ever?

That was the subject of almost all of The Vergecast this week – we talked about how Threads came to be, why it launched so quickly, what to call the things you post on Threads, ActivityPub, and much more. All our numbers are already out of date, because wow is this app growing fast, but the rest I think holds up!

Wes Davis
Wes Davis
Meanwhile, on Threads.

Threads has quickly blown past the other Twitter alternatives in terms of registered accounts. The highest account number badge I’ve seen on Instagram so far this morning puts its count at over 86 million.

At the current pace, it’s likely Threads will hit 100 million today.

A screenshot of Wendy’s tagging Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and saying he should go to space just to make “him” mad. Zuckerberg responds with a laughing emoji.
Zuck engages the brands.
Screenshot: Richard Lawler / The Verge
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Another useful Live Activity.

9to5Mac reports that Instagram is testing a way to use Apple’s more powerful Live Activity notifications to show the progress of your uploads in the background. Seems really handy — I hope Instagram rolls this out more broadly.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Here’s some data about Threads downloads geographically.

Sensor Tower has segmented the data geographically, stating that India (22%), Brazil (16%), and the U.S. (14%) had the most downloads on day one. Twenty-five percent of downloads were on iOS, with the remaining on Android.

It’s not official data from Meta itself, but still gives an idea of the popularity of the app. This morning, CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that the app had crossed 70 million signups.

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
I have no idea if Ryan Broderick’s read on the inner workings of threads is accurate but I lol’d all the same.

Broderick didn’t follow anyone and bathed in the algorithm instead:

My verdict: Threads sucks shit. It has no purpose. It is for no one. It launched as a content graveyard and will assuredly only become more of one over time. It’s iFunny for people who miss The Ellen Show. It has a distinct celebrities-making-videos-during-COVID-lockdown vibe. It feels like a 90s-themed office party organized by a human resources department. And my theory, after staring into its dark heart for several days, is that it was never meant to “beat” Twitter — regardless of what Zuckerberg has been tweeting. Threads’ true purpose was to act as a fresh coat of paint for Instagram’s code in the hopes it might make the network relevant again.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
The Elon Musk private jet tracker was on Threads, but not anymore.

Jack Sweeney made his @ElonMusksJet account one of the first 70 million or so on Threads and spoke to Insider about it yesterday. Last fall Musk claimed he was providing “basically assassination coordinates” and banned his Twitter account until it added a 24-hour delay.

However, sometime recently, the account was suspended on both Instagram (where it had been active for months) and Threads. We’ve contacted Meta to find out more details.

The account remains active on Facebook, BlueSky, Mastodon, Telegram, Nostr, and TruthSocial.

Correction: The account is from Jack Sweeney, not Jack Smith.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Google joins Threads, which now has over 70 million activated profiles.

This morning @Google posted its first message to Threads, and a quick look at its Instagram profile reveals the account is customer number 67,461,606. Mark Zuckerberg might chime in again once Threads passes 100 million registered accounts, which shouldn’t take long at the current pace — about 24 hours ago, the number was 30 million.

Update (12:01PM ET): Zuckerberg confirmed Threads has registered 70 million sign-ups.

@Google profile on Instagram showing its Threads registration number of 67,461,606.
@Google profile on Instagram showing its Threads registration number of 67,461,606.
Jon Porter
Jon Porter
Threads will (eventually) have a chronological feed option, just like Instagram and Facebook.

Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram and its Twitter-competitor Threads, has pushed back at criticism from Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk over its algorithmic feed.

“Both Instagram and Facebook have chronological feeds options, so yes, we’re going to bring one to Threads too,” Mosseri said. Here’s hoping you’ll be able to set it as the default, and it’s not hidden away.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Threads has now activated over 50 million profiles.

After just one day of operation, Instagram’s new social app is already halfway to 100 million accounts. Alex Heath just noted 48 million in this post and a Command Line update sent out today, but the Threads number keeps climbing. (Check the Instagram account of anyone who’s registered, and it will tell you if they were 1st, 50 millionth, or somewhere in between.)

Where do you think Zuckerberg & Co. will be when we wake up tomorrow?

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Instagram Threads launched, and my Mastodon server went offline.

When I went to look at why Mastodon users shouldn’t worry about Meta building on the ActivityPub protocol, I couldn’t — my Mastodon.xyz account had disappeared.

The problem was DNS-related (it’s always DNS, remember Facebook’s massive 2021 outage?), and after a 23-hour, 59-minute break, the server’s back online.

But it shows how decentralization can cut both ways — while this problem didn’t take down all of Mastodon, it left me trying to track down whoever runs my server to find out what happened.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Here’s how Twitter’s leadership is responding to Instagram Threads.

“It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram.” - Elon Musk, @elonmusk (1), (2).

“We’re often imitated — but the Twitter community can never be duplicated.” - Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, @lindayacc.

Threads activated more than 30 million profiles overnight.

Screenshot of two tweets, first by “Internal Tech Emails” (@techemails), reads “Elon Musk on Instagram, August 21, 2018” with an image of an email from Musk to Juleanna Glover, Kimbal Musk, and Dave Arnold saying “I just deleted my Instagram. Weak sauce.” Response to the tweet by Elon Musk “It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram “
Image of a tweet by Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, reading, “On Twitter, everyone’s voice matters. Whether you’re here to watch history unfold, discover REAL-TIME information all over the world, share your opinions, or learn about others — on Twitter YOU can be real. YOU built the Twitter community. 🙏👏 And that’s irreplaceable. This is your public square. We’re often imitated — but the Twitter community can never be duplicated.”
1/3Screenshot of @elonmusk
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
So what’s next for Threads? DMs “maybe...”

Now that Instagram Threads has rolled out to the public (that doesn’t live in the EU), Instagram leader Adam Mosseri acknowledged many of the features it’s currently missing, like “search, hashtags, a following feed, graph syncing, fedeverse support, messaging maybe…”

The spelling of fediverse also reminds us that currently, you can’t edit Threads posts. (Or are they tweets? The people will decide.)

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Mark Zuckerberg on when Instagram Threads will get ads.

For an example of what success looks like on an Instagram scale, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that the goal is to get Threads on a “clear path to 1 billion people” before figuring out monetization.

This mirrors what Adam Mosseri said in an interview with Alex Heath, about the “champagne problem” of making money with Threads:

If we are successful, if we make something that lots of people love and keep using, we will, I’m sure, monetize it. And I would be confident that the business model will be ads. Right now, we are not focused on monetization. We’re very, very focused on just trying to make something that people love to use. And then, if we get something to scale, that’ll be a champagne problem.

Mark Zuckerberg: Our approach will be the same as all our other products: make the product work well first, then see if we can get it on a clear path to 1 billion people, and only then think about monetization at that point.
Just call them tweetsJust call them tweets
Alex Cranz
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Instagram’s Threads app already has over 30 million registered accounts.

Meta’s boss made his last update seven hours ago when it was at 10 million, but more than twelve hours after launch, the pace of registrations (which consists of clicking a button three or four times, assuming you already have one of the 2 billion-plus Instagram accounts) for Threads hasn’t slowed down.

The highest registration number I’ve seen so far (visible on the Instagram profile of a linked account) is 26,051,591.

Update (11:19AM ET): Zuckerberg is awake, and the count is now 30 million, and rising.