Facebook video destination, Facebook Watch, is introducing a new feature called "Your Topics" that will allow you to adapt its feed to include more content you want to see. Currently, Facebook leverages its existing understanding of each viewer's interests to personalize the viewing feed. The topics, however, will allow users to more explicitly tell Facebook what kinds of things they like by exploring and subscribing to various categories of content.
The feature has been silently rolled out to Facebook users for the past few days and now a portion of the user base already has the feature in their Facebook app.
Among the first to notice the new addition was Twitter user @whimchic, that regularly detects updates and changes to mobile applications before they are made public.
They were notified of the feature via a popup within Watch on the Facebook mobile app, we were told. Here, a message explained that Facebook will now focus on viewing more videos related to the #Topics you follow.
"Because of the many different ways your view feed is determined and how videos are rated, you may see videos in your watch feed that you don't care about," the message also warns. "Some videos related to #Topics or the pages you follow may not appear in your view feed," he noted.
If you have the feature, you can access it by clicking the Profile icon in the Facebook Watch tab on your mobile, then clicking the link to "Your Topics" to browse the available categories.
Sub-categories that you can actually follow or not follow are grouped into pages of broader categories, such as Animals, Art and Design, Books, Business, Education, Fashion and Style, Food, Games, History and Philosophy, Home and Garden, Music, Arts entertainment, Science and technology, sports, travel and leisure, TV and film and transport.
However, you can't follow these top-tier categories on their own - you have to click through them to follow individual topics. These can be very specific. For example, within Animals, you could follow #EndangeredSpecies or #GoldenRetrievers. Within Travel & Leisure, you can follow #TravelOceania or #WinterActivities. And so on.
But the sub-category lists are not complete. After testing the feature within the Facebook app on my iPhone, searching for many other possible topics did not produce results. (What, no #Corgi video ?!) This, of course, may change over time as the feature is expanded.
After following a topic, a message will confirm your choice and then the topic will appear under "Topics You Follow" in the Your Topics section of Facebook Watch.
From here, you can choose to unfollow the topic later if you decide to see less of it in your feed. And if you only want to watch videos of a particular topic, you can tap on the topic to learn more about a personalized feed.
The feature is now one of several ways users can customize and filter their broader Facebook Watch feed.
You can also filter the feed by Live, Music, Follow, Shows, Games, and more by tapping the buttons at the top of the screen or from the What's on Watch category selector that appears as you scroll further down the Watch Feed.
Facebook also adds groupings like the "Get Caught Up" section curated by an editor with videos from paid partners, or those groupings that are sorted more algorithmically, like the one with videos that got the most "HaHa" or "Loves" this week, or those that are popular with friends.
The new feature could make Facebook Watch more competitive with YouTube, where historically there has been a greater focus on connecting users with individual channels to subscribe to. But YouTube has also embraced the topics in its own way, with broad categories like "Games" and "Fashion and Beauty" now part of its main navigation. And it puts custom topics at the top of the home page by directing logged in users to the categories of videos they tend to watch.
Twitter, of course, also has its own Topics feature, which displays the best tweets that match a particular interest. These may or may contain videos, however.
Reaching the comment, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed the Topics addition, saying "we're working on more ways to connect people with videos that match their interests." No additional details were provided.
