Facebook is looking to expand user engagement around specific topics, with new displays of topics to follow now being shown to some users within the News Feed.
As you can see in this example, posted by user @whimchic on Twitter (and shared by Matt Navarra), the new topic prompts are based on content, people and Pages that you've interacted with in the past.
As explained by Facebook:
"We may use topics to show you posts, videos and other content we think you may like."
Here's how the Topic prompts appear within the News Feed, below related posts:
It's the latest in Facebook's efforts to expand people's horizons as to the content available on the platform. Last week, Facebook also announced a similar new business discovery element, via related Page recommendations below posts in the News Feed.
Facebook also recently expanded its 'Related Discussions' prompts to more users, to showcase more content related to your interests, which, in combination, could help Facebook boost on-platform engagement and activity, by helping to guide users to more content, and businesses, of interest.
Facebook's been trying to work topic-based recommendations into the News Feed for years, even testing out separate, topic-aligned News Feed listings at one point. These latest approaches are less direct, and could reveal more content of interest, while the push is also similar to Twitter's new focus on topics, as opposed to users, within its following recommendations.
Of course, it's impossible to predict how effective they'll be - who knows how many people will opt to choose a topic, and get more of that more general content in their Facebook feed? But given the potential for expanded engagement and interaction, it's likely worth the experiment, while it may also help Facebook better define audiences based on topic interest, as opposed to just the Pages and people they follow and/or interact with.
That could also help Facebook in its ad targeting efforts. With Apple's coming IDFA update, which is expected to see many users opt-out of in-app tracking, that'll make it harder for Facebook to provide in-depth data trails of customer interests. But if it can get more users explicitly following topics, Facebook can still use that as a targeting tool, as its registered info linked to their profile, not tracked data based on their activity.
Maybe that's the real reason behind Facebook's new push on topics. Either way, it'll be interesting to see how users respond, and what that means for ad targeting and audience segmentation moving forward.
