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The trending topic was redesigned with a keen focus on making it easier to see how other publications are covering a topic other than what people are talking about it, was made clear in another announcement made by Facebook earlier in May 2017. So, now as you click on a trending topic, you will see a carousel of stories from various other publications that you are able to swipe and view.

The publications that show in this section are determined by the level of engagement they are creating on Facebook, both around the article itself and the publisher as well as the other articles that are linking to it.

This card styled carousel look and feel is inspired partly by Facebook Paper; the company’s standalone news reading app. This carousel is still in the rolling out process in the United States.

Another aspect of trending makeover that wasn’t really touched earlier on Facebook’s announcement was how the social network is playing with a redesigned list of news stories that focus on headlines and not just trending topics alone.

The original look of the Facebook’s trending topic that the users pull up with a tap on the app search box, is a simple list of topics and begins like a list that cuts off later. These trending topics will appear in your own recent searches on Facebook.

However, if you are willing to access the trending news link that just popped up in Facebook’s navigation menu, you are going to see an entirely different trending section from the one discussed earlier.

The new stories include a headline, a photo, the name of the media outlet that is reporting it along with other resources instead of the old school just the “topic”, coupled with a word that could be a person or place along with a curvy arrow icon. For example, next to the headline, it might say: “Reuters and 100+ other sources.”

Plus, by adding the photo next to each item, there’s more room for expanded information – that is, a full headline and sourcing. The new section also gives stories a rank (#1, #2, #3,…etc.) Facebook’s prior announcement in May didn’t specifically detail how this Trending News section looked different from Trending Topics. Frankly, it’s all a bit confusing, because Trending Topics and Trending News don’t seem to be tied directly together at this point. For example, you could have the link to Trending Newsin your app’s main navigation, but still not have the new look for Trending Topics, which includes the carousel redesign. However, in that same post, we did get a little peek at Trending News – but it was referenced as being a part of a “small test.”

Facebook said earlier that it was testing a new interface that will add top three Trending News to the users’ news feed. In the screenshot, you were able to see the numbers of stories along with their photos which were ranked the highest in terms of numbers and engagement they have generated. These stories were identified by Headlines, instead of just topics. This integration of a “mini” Trending News section into News Feed is not broadly available. That remains a “small test,” we understand. But the addition of the Trending News link to Facebook’s navigation is already live on iPhone, and being trialed on Android.

Of course, any changes Facebook makes to Trending are sure to meet a lot of scrutinies. The company last year faced criticism when it removed its human editors who curated this section, to run Trending by way of algorithms instead. (And those algorithms soon screwed up.) The social network has more recently made several changes to address the spread of fake news and filter bubbles, as well. In this case, though, Facebook is not monkeying with how news is selected as “Trending,” only how it’s being displayed. The new Trending News section joins a number of other new additions to Facebook’s main navigation as of late, including the food ordering option,  Town Hall, weather, the Explore feed, and more. Not all these additions have stuck around – the new travel-focused City Guides section, for instance, has since disappeared.

So, this was the wrap of the trending news section with its link that is soon going to surface on the famous social media. for more trending tech-news, please keep reading our blog and don’t forget to subscribe for oven hot technology news that we bring to you as soon as its cooked.

The post Now You Can Check Out Trending News in Facebook’s Mobile App appeared first on Branex Official Blog.

The original Snapchat/NBC news show “Stay Tuned” has managed to pull up some really surprising numbers so far, that is, 29 million unique viewers in less than a month’s time. The report was published by Axios. Due to this news only, the Snapchat stocks are witnessing an up-trend since Friday morning.

Although, Snapchat refrained from saying that these many people (29 million) are watching the show for straight 30-60 minutes however, Axios quoted that it is still really impressive for a brand to get its difficult to fetch 25 year old audience to tune in to their show every day, let alone watch the news.

The early success of “Stay Tuned” is the latest in a series of positive, now with standing random numbers for Snapchat Discover and particularly for the series itself. On a recent earnings call one of the Snapchat official said that the reality dating show, “Phone Swap” has also reached more than 10 million viewers per episode. It is known that other TV networks like MTV and Channel V would rather kill for such a show with huge viewership.

It must also be noted here that, 10 million people checking out a few seconds of a short form Snapchat series is way too different from 10 million viewers watching a show on TV, but still the numbers are pretty impressive and eye opening. Other indicators are also there that some Discover content also draws similar large number of audiences. ESPN told Business Insider sometime back that it has 18 million users for a month on it. Hearst’s Cosmopolitan has similarly crowded about big numbers on Discover.

Now all this talks raises two major questions:

1 – Why is Snapchat not trying to make a point to masses about how big it shows are in real?

This is a good narrative for the embattled public company when it desperately needs one. Snapchat has talked about shows like E’s “The Rundown” (7 million viewers an episode) and A+E’s “Second Chance” (over 8 million an episode). Yet we rarely hear about how Comedy Central’s originals, or shows from Jimmy Fallon or the NFL, are doing on Snapchat.

Do you think if CBS has a few hits shows this fall it’s going to keep quiet about them? After all, there seems to be good ad money in video content. Everyone’s pivoting that way.

2 – How can we be sure that the numbers are verified?

Whatever is the number of viewers for Snap are, often comes from partner of Snapchat itself. Now, here, we do not intend to blame anyone that the numbers are forged, however, it’s a known fact too that when a company tells the world about its audience, they are most likely to spin the numbers for their best benefit.

Do 29 million people watch NBC’s Snap show ever day? Or did 29 million people watch it once for a few seconds, and only a few hundred thousand watch regularly? Only Snapchat and NBC know. To be fair, it’s still very early in Snapchat’s and its partners’ venture into these kinds of shows, so reporting may be a work in progress.

Branex UAE tried reaching out to Snap for comment and has yet to hear back. Now whatever anyone has to say about the flaws in numbers that were provided by Nielsen ratings, with people filling paper diaries in this age too, the numbers come out every day and nobody on the television can hide from them.

Snapchat likes to talk about the dozen or so measurement partners it has inked deals with over the last few years. But it needs someone like Nielsen or comScore or Moat grading how well its shows are doing, so the world (and advertisers) can actually dig in and figure out how people are really watching content on Snapchat.

To be fair, Snapchat isn’t the only company that self-reports. Facebook loves to crow about how many daily video views it generates, and we often just take their word for it. And TV networks are masters of taking Nielsen data and making it sound better than it is (the number one new comedy among adults 75-plus on Tuesdays this summer)

The problem is, as we’ve seen of late, between video ads running next to hate videos on YouTube to Facebook admitting to a series of self-inflicted measurement mistakes, marketers are less inclined to take anybody in digital media at their word.

The post Read The Good News That Snap Inc. Is So Excited About? appeared first on Branex Official Blog.

These features are the latest round of public engagement features that Facebook added over the past few months. As part of the effort, the social media initially introduced Town Hall in March to help people discover their local politicians and contact them privately. Another similar feature that was added last month was a button, to contact local representatives within Facebook posts.

These products are directly in line with Mark Zuckerberg’s big mission for his company for the coming year. FB’s tagline is no more “connecting the world”, but it is a matter of building communities now. The CEO’s 6,000 world manifesto released earlier this year which was entirely focused on community building, similar to his speech at Harvard commencement in May.

“Our goal is to help people build the communities they want by making it easier for them to engage and have a voice in government – on a daily basis, not just Election Day,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement about the updates.

One of the new feature is voter badges. Facebook users can now opt in for a tag that will identify them as living in an elected official’s district, if they interact with anything shared by that elected local official. Facebook users will be asked to turn it on if they like, comment, or share a post of their elected official as long as they identify these officials within the Town Hall feature.

When this option is on, all the comments that are made at that moment or earlier by the users on the identified official’s post, will be showed with the voter’s badge. Beyond badges, Facebook is also adding constituent insights where users will be able to discover more stories that are related to their district. This feature is available to both voters and to the elected officials so that the officials can see what stories are buzzing in their districts. All these insights will be fully automated, so there remain no chance of any human molding any of the news stories to show. For elected officials, this feature is available in the Page Insights section of their Facebook Page. Page administrations will see a horizontal scroll of popular stories shared in their district.

For constituents, they can see the trending stories in a Community Tab on the elected official’s Facebook Page. Facebook is also introducing district targeting, where elected officials can choose for their posts to only appear in the News Feeds of people who are likely to be their constituents. They can also run polls to this same group of people.
When it comes to connecting with local politicians, Zuckerberg is doing his fair share. His New Years Resolution is to visit every state in America, where he is also connecting with politicians IRL. For example, he met Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana and live-streamed their conversation with Facebook Live.

Zuckerberg is also hosting Facebook’s first-ever Communities Summit later this month, where hundreds of administrators of Facebook Groups are invited.

“For the past decade, Facebook has been focused on making the world more open and connected — and we’re always going to keep doing that. But now it’s clear we have to do more. We also need to bring people closer together and build common understanding,” Zuckerberg wrote Tuesday in a Facebook post about the Communities Summit.

The post Facebook Badges – Let your Politicians Know Who You Are? appeared first on Branex Official Blog.