Social media company is changing the way its 'Trending Topics' work

folarin okunola

September 1, 2016 1:06 PM

Anyone who wants to know what a story or link is about can just hover their cursor over that story or link to pop up a small window that will show the contents of an associated story and source.

Mark Zuckerberg

Away from the buzz of Nigeria being Mark Zuckerberg's first destination choice for his first visit to Africa, his company Facebook is changing the way it shows you trending topics.

In a blog post, the company said instead of describing a topic with a headline, the new format will simply highlight the trend without all the extra bits.

Anyone who wants to know what a story or link is about can just hover their cursor over that story or link to pop up a small window that will show the contents of an associated story and source.

Instead of the description, Facebook will now tell you how many people are talking about a particular topic.

ALSO READ: "No way Nigeria is not going to be a part of innovations that will change the world" - Facebook founder

Facebook is making this shift in how its Trends section work to make the process quicker and less dependent on human input.

The company had faced criticism over its trending topics section after tech publication site Gizmodo published two stories that Facebook's trending topics section was infused with the opinions of the people behind it making that section filled with bias.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg, however, denied that the Trending Topics section contained any bias after an internal investigation at the company.

In the meantime, Mark Zuckerberg is still in Nigeria - as far as we can tell - and we will be bringing you as many updates as we can until he leaves.