It’s been two months since Facebook began rolling out Twitter-like hashtags, and now the company is experimenting with new ways to make them effective for users and marketers.
The social network ramped up tests for its “trending” topic section last week in the News Feed of its website. The functionality, similar to rival Twitter’s “trends box”, showcases topics, including hashtags that are currently popular on the site.
A Facebook spokeswoman confirmed the test last Friday to Wall Street Journal,“We are running a small test of a unit on News Feed,” she said. “Right now it only available to a small percentage of US users and it is still in the early stages of development.”
The test marks Facebook’s next big step to becoming the dominant destination for live, real-time conversations online.
“It is a critical battleground: The company that becomes the top hub for chatter around news events and TV shows will have a key advantage in wooing advertisers — especially as brands consider spending more money on mobile and desktop ads instead of television ads,” said the Wall Street Journal.
For users on desktop browsers, trending topics are located on the upper-right corner in a user’s News Feed, a very prominent piece of real estate for advertisers on the site. And like Twitter, Facebook’s trending section will reflect popular hashtags and topics that are generating a lot of buzz. For example, Facebook’s algorithm would group all public posts and conversations mentioning #MLK and “Martin Luther,” under one topic in the trending section, such as “Martin Luther King, Jr.”
Facebook said it will disclose more details if it decides to release the feature more broadly.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
