Just a few months after Facebook began using hashtags in posts and comment, the social media platform started testing a second popular twitter feature: trending topics. The initial trial run was only released to a small number of users in the US on the Facebook Mobile app. Recently, after a successful trial run on the mobile app, Facebook has launched a redesigned “Trending” section on its web homepage sidebar in the US, UK, Canada, India and Australia.
The new layout displays personalized lists of the currently most mentioned words and phrases followed by a short explanation of why each topic is going viral. When the user clicks on the trending topic, they are taken to a page displaying mentions of the topic by friends, pages, and public posts. So far it seems that the topics displayed in the trending section are tailored based on the user’s likes and previous shares on Facebook, giving each user their own unique and relevant set of trending topics.
