Facebook starts testing out new feature to provide personalized news updates

As the developers at Facebook are searching for more ways for people to spend more time on the Social media giant, the company started testing a new feature. This new feature helps user by proving customized links of the new topics that are based on the user's interest.

Facebook's newest feature called "Featured Topic" display's a line of text, image or a video based on the user's interest. This will be displayed in the news feed in the core of Facebook.

Facebook confirmed that they are working on a feature like this to help people discover topics and content relevant to them. The company is making relevant changes to the news feed constantly. However, this is still in testing phase and may or may not have a global roll out.

Facebook news feed generally includes status, images and videos posted by one's friends and family. This is all based on factors decided by Facebook's Algorithm. It is also a way to display stuff from users liked pages groups and other outlets. This will help users to discover new things based on how they interacted with the stuff showed to them. This can be used to potentially promote content.

Recently in May last year, Facebook changed it's trending topics after being alleged to suppress conservative news. Leading to Republican U.S. senator demanded more transparency in the companies algorithms.

Facebook last December started rolling out series of changes to suppress click bait videos and fake news after the US presidential election. Ahead of the actual voting the reports of Pope Francis endorsed by Republican Donald Trump and murder of federal agent investigating Hillary Clinton started surfacing. Fake reports like that cause a lot of disturbance in the society. They also lead us to doubt the authenticity of content on the website.

An array of other competitors like Twitter and Snapchat Inc. find methods to show it's users trending news to keep them informed while they use their product.

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Last month search giant Google overhauled its mobile app to show news based on personalized feed. Enabling users to see news on the topics they are interested in.