Facebook launched a ‘Trending’ box

Jan 17, 2014, by admin

Facebook on Thursday launched a new feature, dubbed Trending, to allow people to tap into hot topics gaining buzz across the social network.

“Today we’re announcing Trending, a new product that’s designed to surface interesting and relevant conversations in order to help you discover the best content from all across Facebook,” announced engineering manager Chris Struhar on Facebook’s blog.

The move is one of several initiatives Facebook has taken toward its goal in becoming a go-to destination for finding out what’s hot on the Web.

Social network users generally turn to real-time networks such as Twitter to get a read on which topics are hot on social media. While Facebook is much larger — over 1 billion users compared with Twitter’s estimate of over 200 million active users — its users tend to see the site as more of a place to catch up on their personal networks than to learn about the hottest topics of the moment.

Trending is becoming available on the Web in the U.S., UK, Canada, India and Australia. The social networking giant plans to continue to test it on mobile.

Facebook will place the Trending feature at the top right of people’s News Feeds. It’s intended to highlight things that have spiked in popularity but that are also custom tailored, based on people’s interests.