Can Facebook Become Your Source For News?

Facebook's News Feed has always been a great place to stalk friends and acquaintances from afar — but now the world's largest social network is hoping to transform its Feed into a destination for news. Facebook is reintroducing Trending Topics, a feature that displays the most viral, popular stories and articles on the site.

The redesigned Trending Topics module is rolling out in the US, UK, Australia, and other select countries initially. It can now be found on the upper right of the News Feed, with a Buzzfeed Fr.esh-esque rising stock option.

Each topic will link to a Page or a Feed of links from friends and other users who have marked their posts as Public. Facebook also will provide a headline describing the topic to offer a bit of context. What each user sees may be different — the Trending Topic node is personalized, based on the Pages that user has liked and what is trending on Facebook overall.

Twitter, of course, introduced their Trends feature (in the left sidebar) long ago. Twitter's feature can be adjusted to reflect location or personalized based on the people you follow.

In the never-ending fight to keep cybercitizens' time and attention, social networks will continue to roll out new features that provide content beyond what their users have originally signed up for. Will you begin using Facebook to not only catch up on your ex, but also the news?