The Removal of Trending on Facebook

As the most popular social media platform on the internet, it is important to understand how Facebook marketing plays an important role in internet marketing as a whole. After all, 80% of the general public use a smartphone on a daily basis. With this said, Facebook recently announced their plan to remove the ‘trending’ tab which was introduced in 2014. Read on to find out more…

On the 1st June 2018 Alex Hardiman, Head of News Products for Facebook, announced the intention to remove Trending in order to ‘make way for new experiences’ on the social media platform. The feature was first welcomed in 2014 in order to help users discover news topics that were popular. With this said, Trending is only available in five countries and new statistics show that it ‘accounted for less that 1.5% of clicks to news publishers’. The removal, which has already gone live, will be followed by the removal of products and third-party partner integrations that reply on API trends.

The changes came about after Facebook insiders noticed that users are consuming news differently in 2018 compared to how they were in 2014. In fact, almost 70% of users access the social networking site through a smartphone and prefer to keep up to date on the news through video rather than written articles. Alex Hardiman explained that Facebook are ‘exploring new ways to help people stay informed about breaking news that matters to them while making sure that the news is from trustworthy sources’. This likely comes about after the Trending feature promoted fake news articles in 2016 about magical iPhone features and 9/11 conspiracy theory articles.

The features they plan to introduce in order to replace the Trending tab include a Breaking New Label, which allows publishers to put a ‘breaking news’ indicator on their posts in the news feed; a Today In section, which allows users to view the latest news from the local publishers in their city; and a News Video feature on Facebook Watch which will allow US users to view live news coverage, daily news briefs and weekly summaries.

When it comes to internet marketing the team here at IMQ are the experts you want on your side. After all, social media marketing is one of the most overlooked components of the marketing world and it is essential that you understand how certain changes can impact your efforts, especially since the social media giant also recently changed its algorithm in order to flush out organic business marketing over the posts of friends and family. To find out more information about Facebooks recent changes, get in contact with a member of the Internet Marketing Questions team today!