Facebook’s search was pretty mediocre and the company took notice by revamping their search algorithms for their mobile apps. This was a welcome change since we can now be able to see what is trending just like on Twitter.
However, Facebook’s search has revealed something the company is doing. According to a report by Buzzfeed, one check to the list of trending topics on the Facebook app revealed that the company termed a certain story that actually happened on Twitter as “social media post” without explicitly mentioning Twitter.
Facebook must have some sort of algorithm tweak that changes every instance of “twitter” to “social media” pic.twitter.com/nAm3aNMtts
— ಠ_ಠ (@MikeIsaac) January 28, 2016
This move by Facebook was not met well by Adam Bain, Twitter’s COO who responded very outrightly about the matter:
"Code for Twitter" https://t.co/pZdbJNx67J
— adam bain (@adambain) January 28, 2016
He even sarcastically said “working on changing my business card to COO of Social Media”
Working on changing my business card to: COO of Social Media https://t.co/IGtA0PhUXS
— adam bain (@adambain) January 28, 2016
He went to on to tweet that he had allegedly contacted Facebook about the issue and “they couldn’t answer because their system removes it”
Asked why Trending refers to Twitter as “Social Media,” they couldn't answer bc their system removes it. https://t.co/qQ6rgiGM8H
— adam bain (@adambain) January 29, 2016
BuzzFeed was able to get a statement from Facebook where the company explained what their Trending algorithm does.
“Trending topics are surfaced by an algorithm that identifies topics that have recently spiked in popularity on Facebook. There is nothing in our trending algorithm or policies that excludes ‘Twitter’ or related terms. Our review team writes the topic descriptions and sometimes we get things wrong. For example the Kanye/Wiz beef clearly unfolded on Twitter alone. We are always working to improve trending topics on Facebook.”
From that statement, an interesting thing was revealed: There is a review team that actually writes the descriptions of the trending topics and this can be a source of error. Facebook has been encroaching on Twitter’s turf of late by introducing a revamped search, taking a piece of the sports action, custom icons and Facebook Signal. This will be a matter to follow up to see if Facebook will take the feedback so as to make their Trending tab more encompassing.
