I have been spending a lot of time on Threads. It seems about as efficient as early twitter. There are some basic features we expect missing, but since this is less than a week live I expect they will be added or proven unnecessary.
It is currently difficult to find content from people you follow. We need a filter for this at tte very least.
The lack of trending or hot content may not be needed but it currently feels like the algorithm is hiding the ranking system. More transparency would feel better.
I am sure the algo will get refined and we will be able to filter to see people we follow on Threads one day, but right now the best I can say is there are no ads.