Facebook has made a public announcement today that its trending section will be removed from the platform by next week so as to give enough and adequate room for future news experiences. Dated back to 2014 when it introduced the trending section in a manner to keep its users abreast trending news and trendy topics.
Since the trending section was only available in not more than five countries, it accumulated for less than 1.5% clicks on average to news publishers, for this reason, the company has concluded and dimmed it fit to pull off the plug finally. In addition to the same intentions, Facebook will discard Trending from its platform by next week and at the same time remove products, services and any third-party partner integrations relying on the Trends API. This statement was made by the Facebook Head of News Products.
Further more, Facebook added that it is working towards new ways that will make it prospective users stay tuned and informed on up-to-the minutes breaking news that are paramount to them, while ensuring that the news to appear on Facebook come from a trustworthy, reliable and quality sources. It’s gathered that the company is at the moment test running a ‘Breaking News Label ‘ with more than 80 publishers across South and North America, India, Europe, and Australia. This will let the authorized publishers add a “breaking news” label on every of their posts in the News Feed.
In addition to this, it is a known fact that Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook team are working on a devoted Today In local events and news section in the Facebook app. At the same time, it will also unveil a dedicated unit on Facebook Watch in the United State where individuals can view daily news briefings, watch live coverage etc.
To crown it all, it was reported that after Facebook carried out a thorough research, Zuckerberg and his Facebook team found out that over the time people found the trending section to be less useful. As such, the company has decided to remove the Trending section of its platform next week and at the same time, it will also discard products and any third-party partner integration relying on Trends API- this is an excerpt in an official blog post made by Alex Hardiman, Facebook Head of News Products.