Facebook recently showed a notification which many of you might have not seen. They have notified people saying that they are shutting off Facebook Trending. Trending section started after Facebook saw a huge opportunity from Twitter and implemented the technology on their platform.
It was implemented in 2014 and since then it has just not been used. If I ask you when did you last see what are the trending topics on Facebook, you might not even recall but Twitter Trending is still working.
The notification from Facebook looks something like this:
So we dug deeper as what can be the cause of the whole technology being removed from the platform and the Statistics that they showed were pretty shocking. As per their Data:
"it was only available in five countries and accounted for less than 1.5% of clicks to news publishers on average"
But yes there is a replacement that is coming on the way. After Mark Zuckerberg Testimony for the Data Scam, it was clear that Facebook is going to focus highly on any content that is getting published on their platform and there will be lot of filtering process that is going to happen.
So how is that connected to Trending?
In place of Trending, there are going to be 3 sections:
Breaking News Label: Facebook is going to tie up with more than 80 News Publishers in different countries to generate news that the users are interested to watch in. But this service in its initial stages will only be tested in North America, South America, India, Europe and Australia.
Today In: This is going to have a separate dedicated section which will be an update of the local news around you.
News Video in Watch: In this section you will be able to see the live broadcast of different news channel around you. This feature will only be available in America for now. Facebook has not revealed any plans of expanding this feature around the world.
The Trending feature will stop from 8th June 2018.
Facebook seems to be losing a lot of audience in the millennial category as there is so much more that the generation expects apart from just news updates.
Will Facebook be able to crack the code open and give millennial a new and revised Facebook or it will slowly die of its own burden? We hope that it stays forever but Change is the only thing that is Constant. Let's wait and watch how these features will help Facebook generate more audience and keep its business afloat.