android mobile9

If you needed any more proof that Facebook seems to be drawing inspiration from arch-rival Twitter, here it is. The social networking giant seems to be testing a Trending Topic section on the News Feed of some users.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, this Trending Topic column is appearing on the top-right hand side of the Facebook News Feed. Like the name suggests, and like people are used to seeing it on Twitter, the Trending Topic column will show various keywords that people seem to be mentioning in their posts on Facebook.

Needless to say, hashtags, that Facebook controversially introduced in June, will be the base off which these Trending Topics will be skimmed and displayed. The more people mention a particular topic or hashtag, the higher the chances of it being displayed in this column.

Facebook has been displaying a covert version of these Trending Topics to a much wider base of users. If you scroll down your News Feed now, you may find a post by a friend or someone you follow regarding a topic much in news right now. The post will be accompanied by a tag from Facebook that will indicate that there have been over a few hundred posts about this particular topic. For example, if a huge number of people are talking about Syria, Facebook will show you a post by a friend or a page you follow and say, “Syria. 1,000 recent posts about this.”

While this serves to let people know what is being talked about on the social networking website, it goes largely unnoticed. Here’s where the Trending Topics column could come in handy as it will clearly demarcate a separate section dedicated just to let you know what’s being spoken about. Clicking on the topic will also open a page where you can check out public posts about it.

The test, however, does not mean that this feature will see the light of day as a wider rollout. This could simply be one of the tests Facebook conducts secretly and never releases. It will be a nice touch with Facebook’s hashtag feature, although Facebook would want to make it look a little less Twitter-like.

Facebook has a new competitor, but this one is probably not on Mark Zuckerberg's radar for now. The social networking giant is being challenged by an Indian website Jumpbook.in. The website has been developed by Patna-based brothers Nilay and Ankur Singh who say that they’re already catering to 22,000 users within four months of its launch. The brothers, who spoke to CNN-IBN said that their website offers a lot more features than Facebook does. Jumpbook has been receiving a lot of publicity lately, so we thought we'd check out the site.

Jumpbook is supposed to be a 'five-in-one', according to the brothers. Besides basic sharing and posting, Jumpbook offers a marketplace, a quiz application, forum and a blog platform as well. All very familiar if you have used Facebook for the past few years. In fact, Jumpbook seems to be a mashup of Facebook and Orkut, and even looks very much like Zuckerberg's site.

There’s no doubt that the website is in need of improvement.  You would be forgiven if you thought that the website was a time-travelling version of Facebook from the late 2000s. Almost bare in its interface, the website gets straight down to business, in a very Facebook style. You can upload pictures, write status messages, insert polls and even post songs on the site. We are not sure about the legal implications of uploading music, but that's being offered by Jumpbook. Besides these, you can search through classified ads and connect with users you’d like to purchase something off. There is also a games and apps section on the website that seems to be in a nascent stage yet. It contains only a handful of applications and games and seems more like a test-area than a full-fledged, working section.

The Singh brothers seem to be facing a bit of a hurdle with taking Jumpbook to the next level. As the website started to gain attention, Nilay and Ankur realised they were not equipped to deal with large amounts of people being online together. The website would crash regularly and the Singhs are now thinking of increasing Jumpbook’s server capacity. The Singhs grew up in tough financial conditions and learnt website designing amidst financial hardship. Nilay learnt designing in a local institute and had to quit engineering college so that his brother could study. Both then hit upon the idea of launching Jumpbook.

Ankur and Nilay are now looking at attracting investors who can help them with funding for increasing Jumpbook’s server capacity. “We are planning to launch this on a huge scale and we need some investors to invest in our website so that we can market our website to a certain level to advance to big entrepreneurs from Bihar,” Nilay said.