The Mark Zuckerberg-led company has revealed to The Associated Press that it will be closing down its Facebook trending news section since its inception four years ago. The company thinks that it is outdated. They also feel that it is unpopular.

Facebook Trending News

The Facebook trending news section was also error-prone with issues related to fake news and other instances. Limitations in AI was also a drawback.

The company is now experimenting with new features like breaking news label. Publishers can add it to stories to stand out against the chatter. The board also thinks that local news should be more available.

In an interview ahead of Friday’s announcement, Facebook’s head of news products, Alex Hardiman, said the company is still committed to breaking and real-time news. But instead of having Facebook’s moderators, human or otherwise, make editorial decisions, there’s been a subtle shift to let news organizations do so.

Other Developments

The company is currently looking to create its own cryptocurrency. According to a Cheddar report, people linked to Facebook mentioned that the Facebook cryptocurrency plan would facilitate users to make electronic payments around the world.

Cheddar has also stated in their report that Facebook is “very serious about it”.

The report also noted that “people familiar with the matter said the social network doesn’t have plans to hold a so-called initial coin offering (ICO) by offering a limited number of virtual tokens for the public to buy at a set price”.

Launching a Facebook cryptocurrency service with more than a billion users will help them. It will lead to make payments using the system familiar to Bitcoin.

David Marcus (VP of Facebook Messenger) also said in a post, “I’m setting up a small group to explore how to best leverage Blockchain across Facebook, starting from scratch”.

Blockchain is the ledger used by cryptocurrency services.

Facebook also mentioned in a statement that they are exploring ways. This new small team will be exploring many different applications. We don’t have anything further to share”.

Blockchain’s global spending is predicted to reach $2.1 billion (approximately Rs. 1,41,52.4 crore) in 2018. This is more than double of the $945 million recorded in 2017, according to International Data Corporation.