Facebook’s Recent Changes To Trending Explained

Facebook Office

Recently, Facebook made three updates to Trending, a feature that shows people popular topics being discussed on Facebook that they might not see in their News Feed. These changes are going to prominently affect the way you see trends and how they are shown to you on your Facebook profile. Let us look at them today.

Facebook Office

So without much ado, let’s get straight into the changes that have been done to trending

  • Trending topics will now feature a publisher headline below each topic name
  • An improved system to determine what is trending
  • Everyone in the same region will see the same topics

These changes begin rolling out today and will be available to everyone in the US in the coming weeks. Facebook will be listening to people’s feedback and will continue to make improvements in order to provide a valuable Trending experience.

Publisher Headlines
In order to provide people with more context on what is trending on Facebook, the topics will also now display a headline from a publisher’s article about that topic. This was the most requested feature addition since the last update  that was made to Trending in August 2016. These are the same headlines that appear when you hover over or click on a Trending topic, but people told us they wanted these headlines directly within Trending, too.

trending-final-screenshot

The headline that appears is automatically selected based on a combination of factors including the engagement around the article on Facebook, the engagement around the publisher overall, and whether other articles are linking to it.

Just as before, after clicking on a topic, people are taken to a personalized results page that includes additional sources and posts about the topic.

Identifying Topics
There’s also a change in how topics are identified as trending on Facebook.

Previously, topics may have trended due to high engagement on Facebook around a single post or article. With the new update, Facebook will now look at the number of publishers that are posting articles on their platform about the same topic, and the engagement around that group of articles. This should surface trending topics quicker, be more effective at capturing a broader range of news and events from around the world and also help ensure that trending topics reflect real world events being covered by multiple news outlets.

Everyone in the same region sees the same topics
Lastly, the list of which topics are trending on Facebook will no longer be personalized based on someone’s interests. Everyone in the same region will see the same topics. This is designed to help make sure people don’t miss important topics being discussed on Facebook that might not show up in their News Feed.

So those are the three key changes that were done by Facebook in January 2017 to trending topics. And while we are on the topic, here are some commonly asked questions about Trending:

When did Facebook first create Trending?
They added Trending in 2014. It was designed to help people discover interesting and relevant topics being discussed on Facebook that they might not otherwise see in their News Feed.

Where is Trending available? Is it available on mobile devices?
Trending is available in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and India. Currently, it is available for Facebook on the web, and can be seen on mobile by clicking on the Search bar. The new updates will be rolled out in the US first and feedback will be processed. They will be made available to more countries in the future.

Do people select topics?
No. Topics are selected by an algorithm and are reviewed by a team to ensure they represent real-world events. The Quality Review guidelines can be found here.

What steps have Facebook taken to prevent fake news from appearing in Trending?
Trending uses a variety of signals from News Feed, including when people report news as fake or spam, to help prevent fake news, hoaxes or spam from appearing in Trending. The new update may also help prevent hoaxes and fake news from appearing in Trending because the updated system identifies groups of articles shared on Facebook instead of relying solely on mentions of a topic.

We will keep you posted when we hear more from Facebook in the future!

About Shakthi

I am a Tech Blogger, Disability Activist, Keynote Speaker, Startup Mentor and Digital Branding Consultant. Also a McKinsey Executive Panel Member. Also known as @v_shakthi on twitter. Been around Tech for two decades now.

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