Trending Now: Facebook plugs buzzy posts in News Feed
The social network is in experimentation mode as it tries to figure out the best way to alert its 1.19 billion members to what's trending now.
@jbruin - Facebook has moved "trending topics" from the sidebar to the news feed: pic.twitter.com/wde5HHFbbu
— Nicholas Zahn (@nzahn1) November 6, 2013
Facebook is showing some members stories that are "Trending Now" inside the News Feed of the desktop application.
The in-feed placement, as pictured above, complements Facebook's other Web and mobile trending-topic trials, which started running over the summer. The company is clearly in experimentation mode as it tries to figure out the best way to alert its 1.19 billion members to what people are buzzing about.
"This is just a small test that's been running for a while," a Facebook spokesperson said when reached for comment.
Facebook's campaign to challenge Twitter as the world's water cooler has been in full swing ever since it added support for hashtags in June. The social network has also encouraged people to start embedding public posts on their Web sites and blogs.
As Facebook becomes more Twitter-like, it's only fitting that Twitter take on some of Facebook's qualities. Last week, the soon-to-go-public social network started inserting photos and videos into members' timelines to increase engagement and appeal to the masses.