What are the Benefits of the New Facebook Subscribe Button?
Facebook is a great tool for both the consumers and brands that partake in social networking. However, there are some aspects of the platform that are downright frustrating. Case in point – the level of control, or lack thereof, over the content you see in your news feed. For instance, you may want to see more content from friends, and less content from co-workers. Unfortunately, there has been no way to choose what you see. That is, until now.
In an effort to give users more control over their news feed and the content it displays, Facebook recently launched the Subscribe Button. For the most part, this new feature allows the user to do three things:
1. See content from non-friends
2. Push their posts to users they are not friends with
3. Choose the content they see from other users in their news feed
Below is an overview on the actions the Subscribe Button supports and the benefits that come along with them:
Keep Up with Non-Friends
Considering the name, one could say the main purpose of the Subscribe Button is subscribing to the feeds of people who you are not currently friends with. These users may be your favorite athletes, celebrities, or politicians. So if someone you find interesting has the Subscribe Button on their profile, you can start keeping up with their activity with the single click of a button. Once you do, all the updates they make will appear directly in your news feed.
Gain Subscribers
The Subscribe Button also gives you the power to have your updates show up in other user’s news feeds by getting them to subscribe to you. In order to enable this functionality, simply visit the “Subscriptions Page” on Facebook and click the “Allow Subscribers” link. Once you enable it, anyone who subscribes will automatically see all the updates you set to “Public” in their news feed. If you want to expand your Facebook presence beyond your current list of friends, you should definitely add the button to your profile.
Clean Up Your News Feed
The Subscribe Button allows you to choose just how much content you see from friends in your news feed. This feature gives you the ability to control that volume with the following options:
All updates – Choosing this option will include everything friends post in your newsfeed.
Most updates – Choosing this option will display the same amount of content you usually see from friends.
Important updates only – Choosing this option will only display important updates, which according to Facebook, may include those pertaining to moving to a new location or obtaining a new job.
The Subscribe Button also lets you control the types of updates that appear in your news feed. So, for instance, you could choose to see only the videos posted by one friend, and absolutely nothing at all from another.
All in all, the Subscribe Button is a cool feature many Facebook users will probably put to use. It isn’t anything groundbreaking, but it does add to the platform’s usability, which is becoming increasingly important as competition heats up in the social space.
Category: Social Media
About the Author (Author Profile)
Elle King is an internet enthusiast and currently works for an online provider of email marketing software.Subscribe
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- Button Helper | Fusion Living | October 3, 2011
Subscribe button on FaceBook is same as subscribe button on a blog. It has an advantage of keep up with non-friends post. This helps in building up good social circle.
I see it for first time, quite interesting, lets see what it will offer and what kind of implementation will be available.
I really love the new function. Now I can finally “follow” people like Mark Zuckerberg and Britney Spears. I think Facebook is trying to “kill” Twitter, don’t you think?
so that’s what that button is all about? I was wondering where it came from, and those short facebook noticed don’t do at all. Great post, do u think that people will really start using it with their own friends?
I like this kind of uni-directional functionality. It makes FB work in some way like Twitter. I agree with Albin, Facebook is already the biggest social network, is it working to be “the only one”?
Subscribe button is like RSS? Or follow in Tweeter? Its a good idea if people want to subscribe in a popular artist or something. Interesting, hmm.
I think this will definitely clean up Facebook walls and will work mostly like a block. Personally I don’t really like latest capabilities and interface of Facebook.
Nice! Just wanted to respond. I thoroughly loved your post. Keep up the great work.
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Melissa recently posted..Tips on How to Select a Professional Home Fitness Trainer
Twitter: techcrates
says:
This feature is truly useful to organize the news feed !!
Salman recently posted..Top Ten Mobile Apps for Travelers
Twitter: Jajodia_Saket
says:
If we could create list for people we Subscribed (as we can do with the people we are friend with) would have more easy to manage.
Saket Jajodia recently posted..Get Indian Railways Train Details without Any Registration With Erail.In
I am using this feature and it is really very interesting and useful.
Facebook has been updating a lot from the past few days and the changes are really amazing. Subscribe button definitely useful for FB users.
The subscription button is a great chance to promote yourself in such a way, and then your services which is also very important. Besides, you can subscribe to th famous people and get some experience wile reading their own pages.
Twitter: luganikaran
says:
The Subscribe button has helped me in indulging in an active community. It has done me great benefits by updating me with latest status and updates from my role models and top bloggers i need to follow. It’s just like a follower on twitter. I like the Subscribe BUTTON.
Karan Lugani recently posted..Limit Yourself To 100 Messages a Day Now
So they basically put an RSS feed up for every user; even the button itself has the RSS icon. The RSS feed contains your posts, updates, status changes, etc. RSS is becoming more and more important as more and more people spend more time just using apps on smartphones and tablets, in fact most podcasting and newsreader apps all rely on RSS.
fred recently posted..FinallyFast – Safe Software and Easy To Install
Facebook subscribe button has changed a lot of concepts even for facebook marketers.
Now we can be in touch with people like pete the webmaster of mashable, who doesn’t have fan page.
thanks for the post.
Faissal Alhaithami recently posted..Tutorial: How to make a facebook group
At first i had difficulties in using the new concept of Facebook. But when i was able to use it everyday it’s just easy then and i was happy to know that i can already follow my fave celebs by just clicking subscribe..
The discription of all the benefits of new Facebook subscribe button is very interesting, but still I have to find out it in practice. Taking into account the fact that it is Facebook, I think that I’ll be glad))