Instagram has added another growth feature for Threads, which enables you to tag Instagram users who don’t yet have a Threads account, so that you can follow them if/when they do.

As you can see in this example, posted by Anuj Ahooja, now, you can tag an Instagram user who hasn’t activated a Threads profile as yet, and the tag will show up with an Instagram icon, instead of the regular @ handle.

Other users will then be able to follow that user in advance, so if they do activate a Threads profile, you’ll get all of their updates, helping you keep in touch with interesting users (like Steve Irwin’s son Robert, who’s evidently too busy breeding endangered turtles to be messing around on Threads).

You can also tap through to their IG profile, providing more interconnectivity between the two apps.

Instagram is really the key growth engine for Threads, with various Threads alerts and updates already being displayed to the 2 billion+ Instagram users, helping to boost awareness of Meta’s Twitter-like app.

The question now is whether Threads can keep a hold on that attention, and link more people into the Threads experience, or whether its Instagram linkage has artificially inflated its member numbers, by sparking more downloads of the app.

We won’t know for sure for a while yet, but certainly, Instagram has given Threads a key leg up, which has prompted a lot more people to at least take a look at the app.

And as Threads improves its algorithm, and its in-app experience, that could prove to be an essential growth lever, especially once it becomes available in all regions.

The new IG tags are a smart way to tie into this, which could also make it a more appealing complementary platform for IG creators.