San Jose, California - To stay on top of what's going on, news junkies, PR experts, and trend analysts have long relied on the same feature of what was once Twitter.

Lists, long used by professionals on X and its budding rival Bluesky, are a great way to get an overview of what is being posted by accounts or on certain topics – without the algorithm filtering out anything.

Now, Meta's short-form social media platform is at last adding its own version of this vital feature, one that it's calling feeds, announced as a trial earlier in November.

If the feature has been activated in your version of the app, all you have to do is search for a topic, open the three-dot menu and select "Create new feed".

You can then expand your feed by adding more topics and profiles: Any other topics you search for can also be added via the three-dot menu using the new option "Add to feed". The same goes for profiles of people, organizations, or companies.

In your browser, you can have multiple auto-updating feeds open at the same time. You can also switch back and forth between the custom feeds you have created and the two standard For You and Followed feeds.

In For You, an AI algorithm determines which posts are displayed. The Followed feed, on the other hand, only shows posts from profiles that you follow.

Threads and Bluesky only organize posts chronologically in their following feeds. Mastodon, meanwhile, exclusively uses the chronological approach. It is also the only one of the four major messaging services that is not commercial and works with open-source software.

In contrast to X, the three alternatives aren't putting up walls between each other, and (to a degree) you can already see posts from other services, for example, by connecting Mastodon to Threads or Bluesky.

Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon are the biggest rivals to Elon Musk's X, which appears to be losing millions of users in the wake of the presidential election outcome.

Many users leaving the platform have been angered by the tech billionaire's vocal support and financial backing of Donald Trump's successful campaign, as well as by his decisions to dismantle previous measures against misinformation and conspiracy theories.

Research suggests hate speech has flourished under the platform's new leadership. X rejects this.