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Facebook Launches Trending Topics Sidebar | DrivingSales News

Facebook Launches Trending Topics Sidebar

January 20, 2014 0 Comments

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Facebook launched a “Trending” section on its homepage in an attempt to increase the perception of its value as a vital news source in the social media realm.  Now visible on the Facebook homepage sidebar for users in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and India, this new section displays personalized lists of the most mentioned words and phrases of the moment, as well as short explanations of why they are trending.

Facebook has long been in competition with Twitter over which social network is the best place to go for news on current events, and the addition of the “Trending” sidebar is certainly an attempt to gain control over this aspect of social media usage.  The additional hope for Facebook is that the new sidebar will encourage increased public sharing and drive return visits to the site.  Facebook is continuing testing on a mobile version, while the existing sidebar will roll out to all users in the initial countries over the next month.

When comparing the trending functionality of Twitter and Facebook, it’s immediately clear that Facebook’s section has more information, with its explanations of the trending words and phrases, as opposed to Twitter which simply provides the user with a hashtag.  As hashtags are not always obvious in meaning, Facebook’s strategy has the advantage of providing a clearer understanding of the trending topic for the user.  Alternatively, with the increased expectation for brevity in social media tools, Twitter’s advantage is in the simplicity and efficiency of its design.

Facebook explains that “the description next to the topic is actually a headline that provides context around the topic and what is causing it to trend.  We have rules in place that work to select concise, accurate, informative headlines.”  While the additional information will be of great interest to some, the question remains about whether or not the majority of users will prefer to use Twitter as their primary news source for a quicker view of current news within the realm of social media. The details of what a user will see in the new trending sidebar are described further by Facebook with the statement, “Topics are personalized based on things you’re interested in and what is trending across Facebook overall.”

While the “Trending” aspect of Facebook provides additional information on its initial screen, once you click through, Facebook’s Trending pages are actually quite basic.  A user will see a feed of links and posts by celebrities, Pages and public updates from users who allow non-friends to read their public posts through usage of the “Follow” feature.  Conversely, Twitter’s Trending pages offer the additional functionality of highlighting compiled sets of photos and people that you should follow, as well as displaying posts that mention the topic that is trending.

One unfortunate aspect of Facebook’s Trending pages is that the majority of users don’t post publicly on the social media site and don’t choose to turn on the “Follow” function in their account, meaning that the Facebook Trends may not actually be an accurate portrayal of what is most popular with people overall.  Perhaps Facebook will address this important shortcoming as the Trending functionality is added to more users over the coming months.

About the Author:

The DrivingSales News team is dedicated to breaking the relevant and the tough stories affecting car dealers. Have questions for DrivingSales News? Reach the team at news@drivingsales.com.

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