Have you noticed Facebook's regular news updates presented Buzzfeed style under the website Zdouf? Tantalizing titles, such as the most recent one to hit my feed, "How Animals React To These 2 Little Boys Nothing Short Of Magical," may be obviously playing on our natural curiosities, but they're nonetheless irrestistable to the click (and usually not too bad of a read).
As the world's leading social network continues to expand into the news sector, its latest innovation is a trending news feature somewhat similar to the hashtag phenomenon that propels Twitter, Bloomberg Businessweek reported.
Launced today, Trending, as it is called, presents popular news items unique to a given user, based on their past site behavior, such as what items they tend to "like" and what topics they write about in status updates, according to Venture Beat.
Some of the recommended news stories are also regionally-based, though even that is modifiable, as Venture Beat noted with the example of Baltimore users who don't shown any interest in the Orioles won't receive clippings of Orioles games.
"Up until now, we've been focused on conecting you to your friends - and they will aways be the epicenter of your Facebook," Chris Struhar, a software engineer of News Feed and project manager of Trending, told Venture Beat. "But there's lots of other stuff that's happening in the world that's interesting to me, and we want to get better at showing you that, too."
I haven't yet seen it on my news feed so I can't offer my first, firsthand account, but based on the descriptions, it still sounds different enough to distinguish itself from Twitter's version of trending.
