3 Big Changes are Coming to Facebook Trending Section

Ever since Facebook introduced ‘Trending’, it has seen more than a few changes. Recently, Facebook has introduced 3 major changes that are coming to Facebook Trending very soon.

In the beginning, these changes will roll out in the United States of America. Gradually, these changes will be introduced to other countries such as the UK, Canada, Australia, and India.

So, here is what Facebook is changing with ‘Trending’. 

1. Publisher Headlines

To provide more context to Facebook users, the Trending section will now have publisher headlines. The headlines will be algorithmically selected on a number of different factors, such as:

• The publisher’s overall engagement rate on Facebook.
• Links from other articles to the publisher’s story.
• Article engagement rate on Facebook.

It is important to note that such headlines do appear whenever someone clicks on a trending topic. However, it was a highly requested feature to show these headlines directly within Trending as well.

 

2. Identification of Topics

The second big change is about the identification criteria of selected topics. Previously, Facebook identified trending topics by looking for high engagement single articles or posts.

However, now Facebook will consider these two factors:

• The total number of publications that have covered the same topic or story.
• The overall engagement rate garnered by articles published by different publications on that topic.

3. No Personalisation

The last of the three major updates will be the end of personalization in Facebook Trending.

Previously, a user’s interest played an important role on the type of stories that appeared in Facebook Trending. From now on, however, everybody in the same geographical area will see the same trending topics.

According to Facebook’s announcement, this change is implemented so that people do not miss out on important trending topics that don’t appear in their Newsfeed.