Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, is developing a feature inspired by Bluesky, a social network startup, as it seeks to counter the growing momentum of its competitor. The feature, similar to Bluesky's popular "Starter Packs", will suggest hand-curated lists of users to follow, helping newcomers find people with similar interests.

Bluesky's "Starter Packs" were introduced as a way to quickly connect new users to others in the community whose posts they may find interesting. These lists can center around topics of interest, geographies, industries, fan groups, languages, or anything else. The feature has become so popular that there are now websites, like Blueskystarterpack.com, that organize everyone's Bluesky Starter Packs into a searchable database.

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. Meta, however, may feel threatened by the popularity of the process of building and sharing Starter Packs 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." On the screen that pops up, Threads offers lists of "profiles to follow" where various suggested user lists would be made available.

In the current test, only one suggested user list was shown: a list called "NBA Threads." The screenshot attributed the NBA list's creation to an individual Threads user, indicating that the lists themselves would be built by people on Threads, not the company itself. Meta was asked for comment on the new development but a response was not immediately provided.

TechCrunch was able to test the feature, per Messina's instructions, and was also able to make it appear for us on iOS. This doesn't mean that Threads will definitely launch the feature to the public, but it's clearly something being explored. In recent weeks, Meta has increasingly behaved as if it sees Bluesky as a threat, publicly disputing third-party data that found that Bluesky was narrowing the gap with Threads, and then proceeding to roll out other Bluesky-inspired features like custom feeds and the ability to change your default feed from the algorithmic "For You" feed to something else.

Meta's actions suggest that the company is taking Bluesky's rapid growth seriously. Following the U.S. elections, Threads began circulating a reminder that you could adjust your political content settings. The move came after backlash over its earlier decision to limit political content from being recommended across the app and on Instagram — a choice that pushed some users to adopt Bluesky instead. This week, Meta also announced that Threads added 35 million new users in November so far, an obvious response to the ongoing coverage of Bluesky's rapid growth, which has seen the company go from over 9 million users in September to now nearly 23 million.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri admitted on Threads that Meta had shipped "a few things" on the app without testing them first, in response to a post about Bluesky's competitive threat. As the competition between Meta and Bluesky continues to heat up, it will be interesting to see how these features develop and how users respond to them.

In the broader context, this development highlights the ongoing battle for dominance in the social media landscape. As new players like Bluesky emerge, established giants like Meta are forced to adapt and innovate to stay ahead. The introduction of features like Starter Packs may be a key factor in determining which platform ultimately comes out on top.