Just like how there are Google Trends and Twitter trends, Facebook has its own Trending section on the sidebar where users can see what kind of topics are trending at the moment to keep themselves up to date. However it seems that Facebook has decided that they will no longer be needing the feature.In a post on its website, Facebook has announced that they will be removing the Trending section from its platform to “make way for future news experiences”. Facebook cites low engagement with the Trending section as one of the reasons why they are removing it, along with existing Facebook products/services and third-party integration that relies on the Trends API.
According to Facebook, “We introduced Trending in 2014 as a way to help people discover news topics that were popular across the Facebook community. However, it was only available in five countries and accounted for less than 1.5% of clicks to news publishers on average. From research we found that over time people found the product to be less and less useful.”
It is unclear what Facebook plans to replace the Trending section with, but as Facebook points out, they have been testing out various ways of highlighting the news to users. This is done through Breaking News labels, “Today In”, and a “New Video” in its Watch section where users can watch live news coverage.
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