 "Facebook testing 'Trending' section in News Feed. But will it work?")
Facebook just can’t stop copying Twitter can it? After introducing Hashtags in June , the social networking site is now actively testings a ‘Trending’ section, reports Wall Street Journal.
The ‘Trending Section’ will appear on the top right hand side of the News Feed. On Twitter, trending topics or trending hashtags appear on the bottom left.
According to WSJ a Facebook spokeswoman confirmed the test on Friday and said, “We are running a small test of a unit on News Feed. Right now it only available to a small percentage of US users and it is still in the early stages of development.”
[caption id=“attachment_1078711” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Screengrab of how trends currently show on Facebook.[/caption]
Like Twitter’s trending tags, the section on Facebook will reflect trending tags and topics under that particular tag.
Currently if you click on a tag that someone has added to say a picture, then Facebook has a separate pop-up which shows others posts with that tag. This could and does included sponsored posts at times.
At the bottom of this pop-up, Facebook has a list of more trending tags. When you click on them, you can see more posts related to that tag and also tags linked to that tag. For instance currently #labordayweekend is trending on Facebook and so is #iTunesfestival. When you click on iTunes Festival, you will also see that Lady Gaga, Applause ( the song by Lady Gaga) are also trending on Facebook.
A lot of the posts on the trending boxes are by sponsored links or by official pages. When Facebook finally rolls out the trending section, it would definitely mean good news for news publishers, brand pages etc .
Brands, news publishers, etc would be able to try and set off a trend/key word etc to get on top of that trending box and gain more visibility. This would be a new way of gaining visibility, other than the current form where a post shows in a users News Feed and can be easily missed if a user has a ‘busy News Feed,’ thanks to the presence of many Facebook friends.
But the only problem that stands in the way of ‘Trending on Facebook’ is that many people still view their conversations, pictures, etc on Facebook as private, unlike Twitter which is seen as more of a public forum.
The truth is that I might share a link on Lady Gaga but if I don’t add the hashtag or make it a publicly shared link, its unlikely to show in the trends box on top. Supposing Facebook does show a user post in the trends box even if its not public or not tagged, that is likely to spark a privacy outrage.
Also if the trending section is only going to show sponsored posts or posts by page, people might not feel the need to click on them at all.
When it comes to ‘Trends’ Facebook will have to work very hard to ensure that its able to provide meaningful content, not just sponsored stories or stories by pages. For that it will have make some changes to privacy settings for users. That might go down so well.
Tell us if in the comments if you would click on the Trending section in Facebook.
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