Facebook on Wednesday announced the launch of a new product called "Trending" that would help users keep track of the most talked-about topics among the networking site's 1.2 billion users.
Explaining the necessity for introducing the new feature, Facebook said in a press release that the networking site "is a space where people from all over the world gather every day to share their thoughts and participate in real-time conversations, from the highlights of the Golden Globes to the passing of Nelson Mandela."
And therefore, with a personalized list, users will be able to keep track of what topics are being discussed across Facebook.
The feature, which is now available only in select countries such as the US, UK, India and Australia, can be seen on the right side of news feed section. Apart from listing the trending topic, it also gives a brief description on why the topic is trending.
The new feature is currently not available on the mobile platform.
The launch of this new feature has many questioning if Facebook is trying to copy Twitter, which already has a trending section. But Facebook's feature is different from that of Twitter's as the trends listed on the microblogging site are not personalized, rather region specific.
Facebook launched the Trending feature shortly after reports emerged that the social networking site is launching a personalized news reader, after a recent Pew survey noted that a good percentage of Americans use the site to read news.
"As you might have guessed, Facebook, the world's largest social network, is also the biggest in the U.S. when it comes to reading news. With 64% of U.S. adults using the site every month, roughly half of them (30%) are using it to read news," Tech Crunch reported.
