Reported October 29, 2026, the close-friends-style option lets you post to a hand-picked list of up to 50 connections. The test is live in Ireland, Italy, and Japan.
2026-10-30 · by Moe Ameen
Threads is testing a smaller-audience sharing option called Threads Friends — a feature, reported on October 29, 2026, that lets you share a post with a hand-picked list of connections rather than broadcasting it to everyone on the app. Reporting and Threads' own product team describe it as essentially the same idea as Instagram's Close Friends: a private sub-audience you control.
The list caps at 50 people. When you set one up, Threads suggests followers you interact with most and lets you edit from there, according to a Meta spokesperson. Once the list exists, you can choose to publish a given post only to your Threads Friends; those posts stay hidden from everyone else. On the viewing side, friends' posts from the last 24 hours surface under a green bubble at the top of the feed. The app has an Easter egg that renames the feature "Thriends," previewed by Threads product design director Laura Javier.
The audience is not anonymous to each other. People you add can see that they're on your Threads Friends list — Threads' help documentation states that "People you add will see Threads Friends on your posts, so they'll know they're part of your list" — and if a list member likes or replies, other members can see who they are and how they interacted.
The test is limited to Ireland, Italy, and Japan for now, and Meta has not said whether or when it will expand, so most users elsewhere can't turn it on yet. One wrinkle: someone outside those countries can still view friends-only posts if a user in a test market adds them to a list. Observers have noted the resemblance to Twitter's Circles, launched in 2022 for groups of up to 150 and shut down about a year later — a reminder that private-audience features on public apps have a mixed track record. Treat the 50-person cap and country list as current-test details that could change; confirm against Meta's own announcement before relying on them.
Threads Friends is a narrowing tool: it shrinks one post down to 50 people. Your growth still comes from the public posts that travel — across Threads and everywhere else your audience lives. Those two jobs don't compete; they pair. Use Threads Friends by hand for the intimate, test-the-waters moments, and let [Kompozy](/) run the public engine that actually builds the following you'd eventually invite onto that list.
Here's the concrete split. Keep a tiny, personal rhythm in your Threads Friends list — a behind-the-scenes note, an early look, a question for your inner circle — written in the moment, not automated. Then take the ideas that land there and scale the winners publicly: paste the concept into Kompozy and it generates the full set from one source — a [Text Post](/glossary/output-buckets) tuned for the Threads feed, a brand-exact [Carousel](/glossary/hyperframes), [Quote Graphics](/glossary/output-buckets) of your sharpest line, and a talking-head [Persona Short](/glossary/persona-shorts) — all held to one voice by the [Persona Brief](/glossary/persona-brief) and fanned by [Autopilot](/glossary/autopilot) to Threads among the eight social platforms plus blog and email. The private list is where you test for an audience of 50; Kompozy is how the proven idea reaches the rest. And because a Threads Friends post is reach-capped by design, it's a reason to keep your public cadence strong, not a replacement for it — Kompozy is what keeps that cadence running without eating your week. For the bigger picture on where Threads' audience sits, see our report on [Threads overtaking X in mobile daily active users](/news/threads-overtakes-x-mobile-daily-active-users).
Threads Friends is a feature Threads is testing, reported on October 29, 2026, that lets you share a post with a hand-picked list of up to 50 connections instead of your whole audience. It works like Instagram's Close Friends: posts shared to the list stay hidden from everyone else, and friends' posts from the last 24 hours appear under a green bubble at the top of your feed. The app also nicknames it "Thriends."
As of the October 2026 report, the test is limited to Ireland, Italy, and Japan. Meta has not said whether or when it will expand, so most users elsewhere cannot enable it yet. One exception: someone outside those countries can still view a friends-only post if a user in a test market adds them to their list.
Yes. Threads' help documentation states that people you add will see Threads Friends labeled on your posts, so they know they're part of your list. It is not a private DM — if a list member likes or replies, other members can see who they are and how they interacted with the post.
No — it is the opposite of a growth tool. A Threads Friends post reaches at most 50 people and does nothing for discovery. It is best as a soft-launch or inner-circle space to test ideas. Growth still comes from public posts that travel, which is where a content engine like Kompozy helps: it generates a full set of public posts from one source and schedules them across Threads and the other platforms on autopilot.