Facebook is getting rid of Trending
- The bods at Facebook have decided to call time on their Trending facility, which aims to keep people updated with the latest news following the ‘Fake news’ scandal
- Apparently, the Trending feature was only available in five countries and only accounted for less than 1.5% of clicks so they are looking into other ways to bring people the news
- Ideas set to be introduced include introducing an official ‘Breaking news’ label to publishers content and a new ‘Today In’ section from local news publishers
Instagram reveals the science behind its algorithm
- Back in 2016, the social media app changed from showing content in a chronological order to a seemingly random jumble of your friends’ and favourite brands’ and celebrities’ images
- Instagram product lead, Julian Gutman, said that it prioritises three main factors when creating users’ feeds: How much Instagram thinks you care about a post, how recent the content is and your relationship to the poster
- Additionally, Instagram takes into account: How often the user opens the app, as it wants to show you the best posts first, how many people you follow so you may see less from one person so you can view more different users’ content and how long you spend on the app
YouTube is now the most popular online platform (Facebook is fourth)
- Take a time machine back to three years ago and Facebook was king followed by Instagram and Snapchat, but now YouTube has taken the top spot followed by the same sites in second and third place, according to research
- A study by Pew into the social media habits of U.S teens shows that young people may be losing interest in Facebook perhaps as they distrust where their information goes on the social site or even that they look for more extensive insights into other people’s lives such as the content shared by vloggers on YouTube
And in other news…
The Government is currently considering whether to stop ‘junk food’ from being promoted by cartoon characters and people are raising the valid point that this *could* be the end of Percy Pigs….
