Facebook does numerous tests of new features in a bid to spur more activity on their 1.7 billion strong network. This latest feature being tested by the company is geared in spurring conversations that are being held by your friends in the News Feed.
As spotted by Mashable, this feature “What friends are talking about” can be spotted in your News Feed and in this case specifically on the Android app. This is how it looks like from a screenshot
The feature is simple: It aggregates various posts from your friends which includes the name of your friend complete with a photo and the number of comments the post got. These are arranged in a card like format for you to see which is best for you to engage to.
Features like this would most certainly psychologically implore you to engage in your friends posts especially if there is a lot of engagement in the post. Most of the time, you might not see these posts due to the nature of your News Feed which aggregates what you engage with the most.
This could be Facebook’s way of connecting more with your friends more and it is not a surprise at all. Recently, they made a change to the News Feed by tweaking the algorithm where they explicitly said that friends and family come first. The change also reminds you of Twitter’s “While you were away” feature which shows you tweets that you might likely engage in so that you can voice your opinion about them.
