Social media round-up: Facebook introduces trending topics, but are its teens leaving?

Malaysia’s prime minister has only gone and got himself into trouble. Najib Razak has been widely criticised on social media for comments he made about the price of kangkung which, as you’ll know, is a type of spinach.

In a video of him responding to issues put forward by the public over rising food and fuel prices, he said it was unfair for the government to be held responsible for increased food prices. Needless to say, this wasn’t a very popular announcement.

He claimed that the weather was to blame, but his public ridicule on social media clearly meant that no-one believed his flimsy excuses.

Facebook to start showing trending topics

In its next move to copy Twitter… I mean, become more of a news sharing platform, Facebook will now surface trending topics alongside your newsfeed.

The new feature will be called (wait for it)… Trending, and will show a personalised list of popular products for each user. They will determine which topics are trending using an algorithm designed to recognise a sharp rise in popularity. Trending topics aren’t influenced by a large volume of posts about a particular subject, they are only influenced when the subject experiences a spike in mentions.

For now, trending posts won’t include sponsored or promoted posts, but we’ll see how long that lasts.

IOC to crack Russia's biggest social network

A social network called Vkontake (VK for short) is what dominates Russia’s social media scene, and the IOC are looking to crack it in time for the Winter Olympics, which start next month.

London 2012 was heralded as the first ‘social games’ and it looks like the IOC are keen to emulate this in Russia for the upcoming games.

VK is so hot right now in Russia, with many people preferring it to more well-known platforms like Twitter and Facebook. According to ComScore data, more than 49 million people visited VK last July, compared to Facebook, which attracted a measly 8 million people to the site during the same month.

The official Olympics page on VK now has almost 2 million subscribers, which it has gained in the last 11 months. I’m hoping it puts together a case study of its experience once the games are over, as it will be very interesting to see engagement activity results.

How many teens ARE leaving Facebook?

Word on the street over the last six months or so is that Facebook is no longer the place to be seen for teenagers, with sites like Tumblr taking the teen crown. But just how true is this? Is it just a social media scare story, or have they all already jumped ship?

A report from iStrategyLabs has broken it down for us, reporting on how many teens have left the site since 2011. According to the findings, 25 per cent fewer US teens use the site now than three years ago, resulting of a net loss of more than 3 million users.

These numbers need to be taken with a pinch of salt though, as they are drawn from Facebook’s advertising and haven’t been officially confirmed by the site.

If they are true however, it might just be a drop in the ocean in terms of numbers, but it shows that a very important social media demographic is on the move.

Watch this space.