Facebook is testing a feature for its Newsfeed that will allow users to browse news by topic on the social network.
News of the trial feature surfaced when US marketing consultant Tom Critchlow tweeted screenshots of the "massive change" he saw on the Facebook app he uses on his Android smartphone. Mashable subsequently confirmed the tests with Facebook.
Critchlow's screenshots show a menu bar at the bottom of the newsfeed, which users can scroll through horizontally to select the topic they would like to browse. Topics displayed in Critchlow's screenshots include "Politics," "Sports," and "Food," as well as "News Feed," which presumably allows users to browse content from all people and pages they follow, as Facebook's newsfeed currently does.
Mashable reports the feature also allows users to customise their topics menu bar by removing topics that do not interest them and adding topics that do.
If rolled out to all users, the feature will mark yet another market and function in Facebook's complex expansion plans: that of online news-aggregator, which many users currently access from Web sites and apps, such as Google News, which is available as both.
The move could also drive Facebook users to spend more time on the social network, as the feature will make it easier for them to find content that interests them without closing their Facebook app or browser tab.
According to Critchlow, the new feature also places an "add friend" button in the top right corner of user-generated (as opposed to page-generated) posts on a particular topic feed.
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