Facebook Gets More Topical

Facebook may be feeling Twitter's heat, judging from its latest attempt to emulate it with a new trending topics feature. Both teens and advertisers have demonstrated growing interest in Twitter in recent months, which surely must be unnerving for Facebook. Its new Trending functionality could run into problems with Facebook users, however, as it's one more uninvited guest on the News Feed page.

Facebook on Thursday announced Trending, a new product designed to surface relevant and timely conversations occurring on the network.

Trending, displayed to the right of the user's News Feed, will feature a list of topics that have recently spiked in popularity, personalized according to subjects of interest to the user. It will include topics that are trending across Facebook in general, as well.

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Each topic will be accompanied by a headline explaining why it is trending. Users can click on the headline to see posts from friends or Pages dedicated to the subject.
Trending is rolling out in select countries, including the U.S.
Initially, it will be viewable only on the full website, but Facebook plans to test the new feature for mobile as well.

Similar to Twitter

Trending topics is one of Twitter's most popular features. Facebook presumably hopes its own offering will translate into more users -- or at least stickier users. Or, at the very least, that it will keep users from defecting to Twitter.
Among things likely concerning Facebook is last fall's survey by Piper Jaffray, which found that Facebook's popularity with teens was slipping. Just 23 percent named it their most important social network, down from 33 percent six months earlier.
Twenty-six percent of teens surveyed said that Twitter had become their most important social network.
Perhaps more worrisome, Twitter has grown in popularity among advertisers, according to a survey by Ad Age and RBC Capital Markets published at the end of last year. It found that approximately six in 10 marketers advertising on Twitter planned to increase their Twitter ad budgets significantly over the next year.