Facebook recently announced it’s intentions to change its “Trending” page. If you aren’t aware, the Facebook Trending page is a page on the site where topics that are important to users that they may not otherwise see are highlighted. The Trending page used to be personal to each and every Facebook user. That meant that a person who was often liking and sharing sports related topics was more likely to see Trending topics about sports than someone who was sharing more about make up.
According to a blog post made last Wednesday, this will no longer occur as Facebook will be implementing a singular and universal Trending page. Facebook also announced their plans to launch “an improved system to determine what is trending.”
This new system relies heavily on engagement. A consistent flaw of the Facebook Trending page has been that it focuses less on what people are talking about and more on what they have seen. With the new algorithm, Facebook will be scouring for things that are being talked about and engaged with. It will no longer be enough to trend by simply getting in front of people. Instead, companies need to be focusing on getting customers to like and to comment.
The new algorithm will also look to see how many unique publishers are making posts about a topic. This is believed to be a better metric to determine vitality than Facebook had used previously. By looking at what is being published, both in quality and quantity, Facebook will add to the universality of the Trending page. For example, if only sports publishers are discussing a topic, it may have been relevant to the aforementioned sports fan, however, it will not be trending to the make up fan. However, a large event such as the Super Bowl may be big to both demographics. If both are discussing the Superbowl, it becomes more likely to reach the new Trending page.
Additionally, the new trending page will feature the trending topic with a news headline. This is a highly requested feature from the Facebook community, as this will allow people to quickly and easily see not only what the trending topic is, but also why the topic is trending. What will not change about the Trending page is the ability for users to click into the trending topic to see all posts related to the topic.
These new changes to the Facebook trending topics will come very soon, as it’s expected they’ll be released to users across the board in the next few weeks. VP of Product Management Will Cathcart tells the Facebook community he is very optimistic about the changes, expecting this to clear up prior issues with the switch from human curators to AI.