News trending on facebook - But how exactly does Facebook decide what to put in the Trending queue? And why is it that trends sometimes show up hours if not days after they may be trending somewhere else (cough Twitter cough)?
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www.techchangers.com
Facebook shows you things in your Trending line-up the same way it shows you things in your News Feed: Algorithms. It takes into account a few personal things, like where you live and what Pages you follow. But primarily it looks for two broader signals: Topics that are being mentioned a lot and topics that receive a dramatic spike in mentions.
For example, Kim Kardashian is mentioned often on Facebook, so the total volume of mentions is always high and isn’t a good indicator of whether or not she’s part of a trending topic. Instead, Facebook looks for a spike in mentions relative to the normal chatter around Kim (and probably other celebrities, too). Things that trend aren’t just the most highly mentioned people or topics. They have to be tied to some kind of relevant event.
This is probably a good time to mention that what is important on Facebook (e.g. Zac Efron and Jimmy Fallon smashing eggs onto their heads) may be slightly different from what’s important to the New York Times.
Once a topic is identified as trending, it’s approved by an actual human being, who also writes a short description for the story. These people don’t get to pick what Facebook adds to the trending section. That’s done automatically by the algorithm. They just get to pick the headline.
ou’re bound to see things you don’t care about, and things that seem downright silly. (One perk of the system is that you can hide trends you don’t like.) But the next time you see “Deez Nuts” in your Trending topics, at least you’ll know to blame everyone else on Facebook
Quoted from or in the quotation from http://recode.net
