If you haven’t noticed already, Facebook has added to its suite of features the Subscribe button, a new way for users to filter exactly what they see in their News Feed. Mainly geared toward people with a lot of friends, the new tool allows users to select the information they see from friends in the News Feed, view posts from people who are not friends, and allow people who are not friends to view their posts.
Although the default News Feed provides “most updates” from friends, users can now choose to see “all updates” or “important updates only.” With the Subscribe button, users can also narrow down the type of updates they see, such as only photographs from one friend, and no complaints from another.
However, the most interesting part of the new feature is that users can now subscribe to hear from people they’re not friends with, such as celebrities, artists and journalists. As long as they see a Subscribe button on another person’s profile, they can select the button to begin receiving updates in the News Feed. If users want to share their public posts with more than just friends, they can simply add the Subscribe button to their profile. Facebook members who subscribe to them will receive updates the user selects as “Public.”
So what does this mean for Facebook’s similar offering, Pages? According to the social networking site, the new Subscribe button allows users to maintain a single profile, instead of two separate ones. Luckily, those who have a Page and a Profile can merge the two instead of starting over with the Subscription feature.
The new feature is opt-in only.
Read more:
http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10150280039742131