Facebook to Remove ‘Trending’ News Feature

Facebook is removing its “Trending” news feature in favor of exploring “breaking news” labels and additional news videos, the social network announced Friday. Trending, introduced in 2014 to promote trending news topics, got less than 1.5 percent of clicks to news publishers on average, Facebook Head-News Products Alex Hardiman said: “Over time people found the product to be less and less useful.” The platform also will remove “third-party partner integrations that rely on the Trends” application programming interface. Facebook will test breaking news labels with 80 publishers in North America, South America, Europe, India and Australia; a “Today In” section devoted to the latest local breaking news; and added news videos in the “Watch” section. “We’ve seen that the way people consume news on Facebook is changing to be primarily on mobile and increasingly through news video,” Hardiman wrote.