Facebook begins rolling out Trending News section in iPhone app

Facebook has begun rolling out a brand new Trending News section within its iPhone and iPad app for users in the United States, TechCrunch reported on Monday.

The newly added section is accessible via a dedicated navigational link within Facebook’s mainland mobile app, which a subset of Facebook for iPhone users started seeing recently.

The US-only section covers news stories that are buzzing across the service with the ultimate goal of letting users see how major publications are covering any given topic in an effort to contribute to more balanced reporting on the web.

Trending News also makes it easier to discover other publications that are covering the story, as well as see what your friends and public figures are saying about the topic.

This is how an early version of Trending News looked like in May, before today’s redesign.

Upon tapping the new navigational link, you’re presented with a list of stories.

The items in the Trending News section are some of the most popular stories about that topic on Facebook, the company has said. These stories may also appear in users’ News Feed.

Thankfully, Trending News stories can be easily removed from your News Feed via a popup menu in order to prevent them from being shown there in the future. The company plans to bring Trending News to its Android and desktop apps soon.

The new section is basically a revamped Trending Topics page that surfaced in May.