Facebook mimics Twitter again; starts testing Trending Topics

No, it’s not just you. Facebook indeed is becoming more Twitter-like with every passing day. After having introduced verified accounts and hashtags, Facebook is toying with making a whole new Trending Topics section available on the service.

According to AllThingsD, Facebook is working towards letting people know what the chatter across the social network currently is. Trending Topics is all set to be released to a limited number of users in the US today. Oddly, the feature seems to be available for the mobile website only.

Rolling out in US now

Facebook seems to have shifted its focus over a period of time from making you look beyond just your circle of family and friends to talking about and discovering newer things going on in the world. Facebook’s USP had always remained being able to connect with your loved ones which slowly started to change over a period of time when the service introduced the Follow feature as well as hashtags. Twitter, on the other hand, has always been about discovery, a domain that Facebook now wants a piece of.

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Trending Topics will be available on the mobile website of Facebook and users will see a banner flagging a particular topic. Once they click on it, they’ll be able to first check out what their friends are talking about on that particular topic and then comments and posts from others. Justin Osofsky, a Facebook executive who oversees platform partnerships defends Facebook’s moves and says that the site is not moving away from its original mission of connecting users with people they already know. He says that this new initiative will help Facebook “unlock and surface the conversation about shared interests that’s already happening.”