Facebook announced Thursday it's lunching a new feature that will show users the topics that are trending in the news.
The new module will be different from Twitter, which uses hashtags for trending topics. Instead, the Facebook version will suggest the most popular stories and headlines from around the site that the user might be most interested in, the New York Times blog Bits reported.
"Today we're announcing Trending, a new product that's designed to surface interesting and relevant conversations in order to help you discover the best content from all across Facebook," Engineering manager Chris Struhar, wrote on Facebook's blog, according to USA Today.
Trending will show the user three topics located at the top right of the news feed column. Users will see a headline about each topic to help them determine what the discussion is about, Bits reported. The trending topics are picked based on how recent the topic showed up on Facebook, how many people are talking about it, and the credibility of the people talking about the topic, Struhar told Bits.
The new feature indicates Facebook's venture to be the premiere online destination for people to discuss current events, Bits reported, an achievement that has been difficult because Facebook allows users to communicate privately among friends.
Twitter has so far been more convenient for national discussions and sharing the day's most pressing news, such as the death of Nelson Mandela, Bits reported. According to Chris Struhar, Facebook's Trending will be more user friendly, unlike Twitter's trending list with jumbled words and hashtags that are difficult to read.
"Showing just the topic name, you kind of look at that and say, I don't understand why this thing is trending," Struhar said, according to Bits.
The Trending feature should be available to U.S. Facebook users in the next two weeks.
"We've spent a lot of time trying to understand who has the most interesting things to say," Struhar told Bits.
