Facebook unveils new tool for journalists to monitor trending topics

PanARMENIAN.Net - To know what’s trending on Facebook right now, journalists can monitor which topics are trending and then quickly display related content that has been shared publicly-unranked and in chronological order- from both people and Pages for deeper context on those trends. To better leverage its mass of data (and, likely, take on Twitter), the company has introduced a new curation tool for journalists called Signal, which offers up content from both Instagram and Facebook, Dispatch Times reports.

Signal is only the most recent of Facebook’s efforts to intertwine itself with the journalist and media publications that have found success attracting a big audience through the social network. Facebook Signal happens to be a brand new tool that will hopefully encourage journalists to find as well as share news from the network, which might also see the undermining of Twitter along the way.

Signal is not the first tool Facebook has made for journalists.

“We’ve heard from journalists that they want an easy way to make Facebook a more vital part of their newsgathering with the ability to surface relevant trends, photos, videos, and posts on Facebook and Instagram for use in their storytelling and reporting”, Facebook’s Andy Mitchell wrote in a blog post.

Facebook has long had relationships with media organizations.

There will also be an enhanced Instagram search that will allow for location and topic-based queries to find visuals. The hope is that if Facebook makes this information easier to find, it will appear in other places on the Web – like the articles that journalists drum up every single day.