Facebook on Friday announced that it’s killing the Trending news section soon, and replacing it with other ways of delivering news to you while you’re spying on your ex. It turns out that Trending wasn’t as popular as Facebook would have hoped, and that’s why it’s removing the feature. Curiously enough, news that trending news is going away on Facebook is already trending.
The Trending section was available in five countries but didn’t do much for news publishers, according to a Facebook announcement. Apparently it resulted in “less than 1.5% of clicks to news publishers on average,” and people found the product to be less and less useful.
Next week, Trending will be gone, complete with products and third-party integrations that make use of the Trends API.
Does it have anything to do with Facebook’s fake news problem? Facebook does say that it’s exploring new ways of helping users stay informed of “breaking news that matters to them, while making sure the news they see on Facebook is from trustworthy and quality sources.” So yes, in a way, it likely does have something to do with fake news.
Of course, Facebook will still offer you access to news, including trending and breaking news. “Today In” is the name of a new Facebook section that will feature the latest breaking and important news from local publishers, local officials, and organizations. A Breaking News label will appear on stories from 80 publishers across North America, South America, Europe, India, and Australia. Finally, Facebook Watch will host a dedicated news video service in the US where people “can view live coverage, daily news briefings and weekly deep dives.”
