I Tested Our New Trending Topics Feature and Got 54K Views Overnight

See what’s trending on Threads before you post. Buffer’s Trending Topics helps you join conversations that already have momentum and reach new audiences.

Threads has over 150 million daily active users. Great for reaching new audiences. Also, a discovery problem.

How do you get seen when millions of conversations are happening at once?

Enter: Trending Topics for Threads, right in Buffer. It brings real-time trending conversations directly into Buffer's composer.

Built in partnership with the Threads team, Trending Topics surfaces what's trending on Threads to anyone, no matter your location, through Buffer's API access.

The discovery challenge on Threads

The Threads algorithm rewards genuine conversation and authentic engagement. Success comes from joining discussions people actually care about, at the moment they care about them.

The trick is knowing what those discussions are.

What topics are resonating right now? Which conversations have momentum? What should you be talking about to reach new audiences who share your interests?

We built Trending Topics in Buffer to solve this.

When you open Buffer to create a Threads post, trending topics appear right in the composer.

You'll see what's trending, browse actual posts from each conversation, and understand the context before you jump in. Then create your post and join a discussion that already has audience attention.

Fun fact: Threads currently only shows trending topics to users in the US and Japan. But through our partnership, we make US trends accessible to everyone, everywhere.

A real example: My quantum physics experiment

Last week, I wanted to test the feature myself. I saw "Quantum physics" trending and thought, "Well, this could be interesting." I'm no physicist, but I've watched enough sci-fi to have opinions. I brainstormed a post with AI that was equal parts curious and tongue-in-cheek, hit send, and went to bed.

I woke up to 54,000 views and 90+ reposts.

The post resonated because it added value to a conversation people wanted to have. That's the power here. You're participating in real conversations at the right time.

The whole process took maybe 10 minutes. Saw the trend, brainstormed a relevant angle, wrote the post, scheduled it, done. The next morning: 54,000 views.

It isn't just me either. Other folks on our team have also experimented with Trending Topics and seen real results. For example, Amanda, our Staff Product Manager, posted her take on The Muppet Show and generated a ton of conversation and 6k views.

The experiment taught me a lot of things (and not just about quantam mechanics).