After learning that the ‘trending topics’ feature was found less useful over time and after being criticized for content selection surfacing fake news stories, Facebook announced that it will shut down the product next week.
As reported by Techspot.com. the networking company’s decision of removing the feature will open improved opportunities for Facebook to keep users informed of breaking news.
Alex Hardiman, head of news products at Facebook, said that after research showed that people found the feature less useful over time, they have decided to remove the product which was only offered in five countries with less than 1.5 percent of clicks to news publishers, as well as third-party partner integrations that rely on the Trend API.
To keep users informed, Facebook is testing a new label for ‘breaking news’ with 80 publishers across Australia, Europe, North America, South America, and India.
There are also tests conducted for a local news section called ‘Today In’ for live coverage, daily news briefs and weekly deep dives.
(Photo source: wsj.com/ ndtv.com)
