Facebook Inc is testing a feature in the Facebook News Feed that provides customized links to news on topics of interest to individual users, the firm has revealed.
It comes as the company continues to search for ways to increase the amount of time that people spend using the world’s largest social media network.
The offering, called ‘Featured Topic,’ is being tested on News Feed, the core of Facebook.
Facebook Inc is testing a feature in the Facebook News Feed that provides customized links to news on topics of interest to individual users, the firm has revealed. A stock image is pictured
Each selected item includes a couple of sentences of text on a subject, a link to a news story and a photo, according to an example seen by Reuters on Thursday.
Facebook confirmed that the feature was in testing and said it was designed to help people discover stories that might be relevant to them.
The company makes frequent changes to the News Feed, typically testing potential features at length before making them official.
Facebook’s News Feed includes items posted by a user’s friends and family – displayed in an order according to Facebook’s algorithms – as well as ads and posts from outlets that a user likes.
Many media companies, however, provide their subscribers with lists of stories that correspond to readers’ individual interests, based on their use of a news site.
Presenting news stories has been tricky for Facebook.
In May 2016, Facebook changed the procedures behind its ‘Trending Topics’ section after a news report alleged that the company had suppressed conservative news and a Republican U.S. senator demanded more transparency.
Facebook in December began rolling out a series of changes to stem hoaxes, clickbait and false news stories like those that spread ahead of last year’s U.S. presidential election.
The firm recently revealed it would be adding ‘Stories’ to desktop. Critics have largely called Facebook Stories a failure, and user ship has been so low that in April the company began displaying grayed-out icons on the Stories section of the app to make it seem less empty
FACEBOOK BRINGS ‘STORIES’ TO DESKTOP
Facebook’s testing Stories for desktop.
While only appearing for a small percentage of users, Facebook confirmed a wider roll out of stories for desktop is expected soon.
The company has previously added stories to Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and the Facebook mobile app, but this is the first time the feature will be on the desktop site.
Many are calling the move a last-ditch effort to get the feature to catch on with Facebook users.
While Stories were on the top on the app, on desktop feature is located on the top right of the page below notifications and above the trending news links
Ahead of the election, Facebook users saw fake reports saying that Pope Francis had endorsed Republican Donald Trump and that a federal agent who had been investigating Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was found dead.
An array of other services, such as Twitter Inc and Snap Inc’s Snapchat, offer competing ways to find trending news.
Last month, Alphabet Inc’s Google overhauled its mobile search app to include a personalized feed of links.