Facebook brings Trending Updates to mobile devices

10 Dec 2014

Almost a year after introducing Trending to help people find news stories and conversations that may interest them, social network Facebook is bringing the feature to mobile devices.

When users of Facebook’s mobile app tap on a topic in Trending, they will see conversations organised in five groups.

According to Facebook, these five groups are:

  1. Articles – shows you how news organisations are covering the story.
  2. In the Story – shows you posts from people who are part of the story.
  3. Friends and Groups – shows you what people in your network are saying.
  4. Near the Scene – shows you posts from people near where the story is unfolding.
  5. Live Feed – shows you a real-time stream of reactions from people around the world.

Facebook product managers Diana Hsu and Andrew Song said that on the mobile screen the feed below the new sections will continue to show relevant posts ranked by engagement, timeliness and other factors.

“The way that your Trending topics are determined hasn’t changed, and as always, only public posts and posts that you are in the audience for – like updates from friends or groups that you belong to – will be shown in Trending.”

Facebook said the new Trending experience begins rolling out today, and will be available to people on Facebook in the US for the web and Android. Support for iOS and other countries is coming soon.

 

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com