Threads is overhauling its in-app analytics with more details, except for link clicks

The insights section now surfaces AI summaries and contextual info about post performance.

If you're active on Threads then you know that most posts live and die by the platform's "for you" algorithm. Because the app defaults to recommended posts, and also pushes some of those posts to Instagram and Facebook feeds, the Threads algorithm ends up driving the majority of views for most people, even if you have a lot of followers.

But that algorithm has also been something of a mystery , even to regular users and popular creators on the service. Now, Meta is making it a bit easier for people to decipher what's driving their engagement (or lack thereof) with redesigned analytics that provide more contextual information about post performance.

The overhauled "insights" panel now features Meta AI-powered summaries about individual posts and your account overall. "This post got about 8 times more views than your recent posts, and reach was higher too," an AI summary of one of my recent Threads posts explains. "Fewer viewers liked it compared to your recent posts."

The insights panel still breaks down more granular statistics, like views, viewers, likes and reposts, but it will also detail whether these numbers are "higher," "lower" or "typical" compared to your other recent posts. Threads has been pushing interest-based "communities" for a while, and the app's analytics is also able to surface which communities are driving engagement on a particular post.

Likewise, at the profile level, insights can give a more zoomed-out view of your Threads presence. "This has been one of your quieter months, with views down 75% and interactions falling too," my Meta AI summary says about the month of August. "Your audience was mostly men aged 35 to 44, and Tech Threads and AI Threads led the viewer list while your followers lean more toward Book Threads." None of that is particularly surprising (it's true, I have been doing a lot more lurking than posting lately), but there are some details that could be helpful if I cared about getting my reach back up. For example, it surfaces which days of the week and time of day I've seen the best reach.

One metric that is conspicuously absent from the updated insights feature, though, is stats around link clicks. Threads had added details about link performance in an update last year. The company said at the time it wanted to help creators expand their reach "even outside of Threads." Even so, many creators have continued to believe that the service downranks posts with URLs, and data reported by Engadget last year found that very few Threads users ever click on links.

Now, the company has eliminated data around links clicks altogether. This happened before the latest update, though it's not clear exactly when Meta got rid of the stat. But link data is also not available in the newly expanded analytics either. Whether that's because Meta has changed priorities, or more of a reflection of users' general ambivalence for navigating away from the app is anyone's guess. At the very least, it does suggest that as Threads evolves to focus more on its homegrown "communities," Meta is once again de-emphasizing off-platform content. When I asked the company about why it's no longer allowing creators to track link clicks, a spokesperson told me they were "exploring" the feature, but didn't comment on why it was removed in the first place.