Threads already has over 400 million monthly users, but Meta wants to grow that number. With the launch of a new Threads feature this week, the company is making it easier for Threads users to share posts in the app to their Instagram Stories — a move that could leverage Instagram’s larger user base to bring more people to Meta’s X competitor.
The company was announced on Thursday a new feature that lets you share a Threads post to your Instagram Story without having to leave the Threads app, instead previewing how your Story post will look right inside the Threads app.
The app previously allowed you to share any user’s Threads post to your Instagram Story, just as you would repost someone’s Instagram post to your Story. It also already offered tools for sharing posts to your Instagram Feed or DMs.
Meta’s Twitter-like text-first app Threads first launched in July 2023 and took advantage of its ties to Instagram to quickly grow its initial user base. To sign up, users had to authenticate with their Instagram credentials, which allowed Threads to be populated with account information such as username, bio, and photo, as well as verification status and followers.
With one tap, users could instantly follow accounts they already followed on Instagram — and those who weren’t in Threads would get a notification that someone had added them.
In the months and years following its launch, Meta relied heavily on the other, larger social media platforms to continue to grow Threads, including by showing popular Threads posts on Facebook and adding a similar carousel of Threads posts to Instagram users. The company also made it easier for users to cross-post from Instagram and Facebook into Threads, which also helped with adoption.
These moves paid off. Data from market intelligence provider Similarweb last month showed that Threads now sees more daily usage than Elon Musk’s X on mobile devices. (However, X still dominates the web.) Threads’ numbers are also growing steadily, doubling usage from 200 million monthly active users in August 2024 to 400 million monthly users by August 2025. The company announced in October that Threads also reached 150 million daily active users.
