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News Feeds in Social Media


In the last two decades, social media websites such as Twitter, and Reddit have increased in user bases so much that both sites have at least 52 million daily users. One thing that the creators of these platforms realize is that they can use these platforms in order to give targeted news stories to those that use their websites. Twitter, for example, always has a section to the right of your main feed called "What's happening". Within this feed is news stories that Twitter thinks you would like based on the people you follow and the topics you post about. Some of these news blurbs include description text, which can offer insight to a topic in order for the reader to get more context, an example of this is the currently trending #-TexasChainsawMassacre which includes the text "The reviews are in for Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the new sequel to the 1974 horror classic, which is now streaming on Netflix". With this information, the typical reader will know that this news topic is about the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie and that it can be viewed instantly on Netflix, two important pieces of information that are conveyed immediately upon viewing the topic. By recommending topics that the algorithm deems we would like, websites like Twitter increase the average use time of the website, allowing for a more active userbase.


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