First hashtags and now trending topics? According to reports from CNET, Facebook is taking another step toward imitating its social media rivals at Twitter.

Currently, a Facebook “trending” news section is being tested among a small sample size of users. For these beta testers, the trending box or column appears as a sidebar at the upper right-hand corner of the homepage screen. The box includes a number of topics that are supposedly receiving a good deal of discussion among Facebook’s collective network of users – a population that now includes roughly 1.15 billion people.

The question with this new “trending” feature is this: does Facebook want to become more like Twitter? Despite Facebook’s size and global reach – which more or less dwarfs that of Twitter – the company could hardly be blamed for wanting to adopt a few of the more attractive features of the rival site. Where Facebook is used generally as a tool for keeping up with friends and family members – in essence, the very definition of social media – Twitter seems to be where users go to discuss broader topics with a network of like-minded individuals. For a long time, Twitter’s hashtags and trending topics have made it the place to be for conversing about entertainment topics like TV shows or celebrity blunders, while the same features make it competitive with any news source for breaking or developing stories.

Facebook’s choice to establish a trending topics section is a natural progression from the hashtag adoption that took place two months ago. Now that hashtags have been around for awhile, there is a large enough base of users that could benefit from seeing which tags are being used the most often. When the new trending news box will appear on all Facebook pages remains to be seen, however. According to a Facebook spokesperson, the trending topics column is still in “the early stages of development.”

If Facebook decides to persevere through developing the new feature and releasing it to the general ranks of Facebook users, it could help boost the site’s bottom line as far as advertising and traffic are concerned. Right now, the site is the hub for what is going on in small, person-to-person relationships. With trending topics, Facebook could add another dimension to its relevance, offering a glimpse at what is going on in the wider world as well. However, whether users are ready to accept a blend of Facebook and Twitter remains to be seen: many users rejected Facebook’s choice to adopt hashtags, an indication that some would still like to keep the two social media experiences separate.