In Battle With Twitter, Facebook Tests Trending Topics Feature

Just two months after rolling out hashtags—topics formatted with a "#" sign, first popularized on Twitter—Facebook is taking another leaf out of its rival's playbook and testing a trending topics section on select users' news feeds, the Wall Street Journal reports. ReadWrite confirmed that the new feature is showing for at least one employee: Hashtags on Twitter act as a way for users to participate in and monitor conversations, and it looks like Facebook wants its users to have a similar experience. The trending topics section that began testing on Thursday will appear on a user's homepage news feed and will feature popular topics being discussed on the site. Unlike Twitter, Facebook is not using the "#" sign. Instead, it appears to be interpreting and collecting users' posts on a subject together regardless of whether they use explicit hashtags or relevant keywords. Facebook began testing the trending topics feature on its mobile website earlier this month.