Facebook introduced a new “Trending” section on the web in January to display trending stories that are frequently shared and discussed on the social network. Today, the company announced that it has improved this feature by organizing trending topics into five categories so that it’s easier for people to explore stories from different sources.
More importantly, Facebook is bringing the “Trending” section to mobile devices, including all of the improvements to the web version, with support for Android and the web rolling out today and iOS coming soon. The new experience is currently only available to Facebook users in the United States, although other countries are coming soon.
“The feed below the new sections will continue to display relevant posts ranked by engagement, timeliness and other factors,” writes Facebook in a blog post. “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.”
The new categories for conversations are as follows:
- Articles shows you how news organizations are covering the story.
- In the Story shows you posts from people who are part of the story.
- Friends and Groups shows you what people in your network are saying.
- Near the Scene shows you posts from people near where the story is unfolding.
- Live Feed shows you a real-time stream of reactions from people around the world.
