Threads is adding polls and GIFs as it continues to chase X

Meta is going to let you make polls and insert GIFs right from the Threads post composer, the company announced on Thursday. Later in the day, Instagram head Adam Mosseri revealed that the company is testing view counts on Threads posts and pinned posts on profiles and in your replies.

The polls and GIFs features are now rolling out, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated by making a post with a GIF and another post with a poll. They’re small additions, but they’re features you have been able to do on X (formerly Twitter) for a very long time.

Zuckerberg’s poll has three options (you can include up to four) and a timer that counts down how long users have to vote in the poll in real time, which is a nice touch. To be able to see the results of the poll, you’ll have to vote in it. If you do vote, Threads will send you a notification when the poll concludes.

To more easily share GIFs, you’ll be able to select a new GIF icon to search for GIFs from Giphy. The picker will show GIFs that are trending, or you can use the search bar to track down a specific GIF.

The new Threads tests are also features you might be familiar with from X. X launched view counts for all users in December, and Mosseri seems like a fan of the concept. “View counts are interesting as I think if we were shipping Instagram, or Facebook, today, we would probably have them,” he wrote on Thursday. “They give people a better sense of their reach, and generally more feedback is a good thing.”

Pinned posts are a staple of X profiles, but Threads is innovating on the idea by letting you pin a reply to a post. Mosseri says both the view counts and pins tests are “live now for a small number of people.”

Threads launched in July, and Meta has been pleased with the progress; on Wednesday’s earnings call, Zuckerberg revealed that the app already has “just under” 100 million monthly active users.

Update October 26th, 7:06PM ET: Added details about new Threads tests.