Facebook Stops Pretending They Aren’t Trying to be Twitter Anymore, Unveils Trending Topics

Because they just know we all love it when they make unnecessary changes.
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You know how everyone loves Twitter and totally doesn’t make fun of it or anything? And they’re always saying stuff like, “Man, I wish Facebook were more like Twitter?” Okay, me neither. But apparently we’re not talking to the same people as Mark Zuckerberg, because the team that brought hashtags to Facebook has just added trending topics.

And it’s already started for a lucky group of users. Oh, joy.

So far, this new addition is only on the mobile app. It will appear as a banner across the top of your newsfeed, showing– well, which topics are trending. If you click to see more, you’ll be presented with updates and links from both friends and complete strangers.

This latest change comes on the heels of Facebook’s recent efforts to court celebrities by offering “incentives” to those who post and by using advertising to further boost their online presence.

Facebook executive Justin Osofsky says the Trending Topics (that’s seriously what they’re calling it) are intended to “unlock and surface the conversation about shared interests that already happening.”

Hey guys, here’s an idea: if you’re going to blatantly steal ideas from Twitter, then can we maybe cap the length of status updates first? That I could probably get behind. I’m so sick of paragraph-long Facebook rants.

(via AllThingsD via Gizmodo, image via Sam Michel)

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