Facebook announced on Monday that it is launching new tools for media organizations to make use of trends on Facebook. This is the latest in Facebook’s series of releases related to public conversations.

The new tools come in the form of two APIs: the Public Feed API and the Keyword Insights API. The former will display a real-time feed of public posts for a specific word. It only works with public Page posts and public Profiles that have “Follow” turned on.

The latter aggregates the total number of posts that mention a specific word in a given time frame, and can display anonymous, aggregating results based on gender, age and location.

The APIs are rolling out now, but only to a few select partners, including: Buzzfeed, CNN, The Today Show (NBC), BSkyB, Slate and Mass Relevance. Facebook’s Justin Osofsky writes:

Starting today, selected news organizations can begin to integrate Facebook conversations into their broadcasts or coverage by displaying public posts of real-time activity about any given topic. For example, CNN’s New Day can now easily incorporate what people on Facebook have to say about the latest, breaking news event during their show.

Partners can also use these tools to show the number of Facebook posts that mention a specific word over a period of time, including a demographic breakdown for the people talking about that topic. For instance, now every week during the ‘What’s Trending’ segment of The Today Show, NBC can easily include how many people on Facebook talked about a popular subject, where it’s getting the most buzz, whether it’s most popular among males or females, and with which age groups. Mass Relevance, a technology company that enables social experiences, is also leveraging these new tools in interesting ways to highlight the trends and conversations happening on Facebook for their media clients.

Availability will come to additional media outlets soon, as the company says it is beginning discussions with other media partners and marketing developers.

The company also shared some stats about the NFL season opener from Thursday: 20 million likes, comments and shares on Facebook by over 8 million people. Here’s an infographic showing the relationship between TV events and Facebook engagement:

It’s been happening gradually for years, but we’re clearly seeing Facebook adopt more of a Twitter-like strategy of late, at least when it comes to public posts. It’s going to be interesting to watch what kind of effect, if any, this has on Twitter moving forward. Will Twitter get as much love from media outlets as it has historically with Facebook providing its version of what Twitter has been offering?

Twitter meanwhile continues to push further and further into the TV world with things like a partnership with Nielsen, TV ad targeting, and the recent acquisition of Trendrr, to name a few.

Twitter is also still shattering its own records in television engagement. The recent finale of Pretty Little Liars garnered 1,973,418 tweets, making it the most tweeted-about episode of a TV show in history.

Image: Facebook