Facebook launched a feature Facebook Subscribers where users on Facebook can now read your public updates. Till now a user have an option to show his news feeds and updates (on his wall) to everyone, friends or to limited friends. But no option where user’s feeds can be subscribed by non-friends users i.e. seen on their walls. Similarly, like Twitter and Google+ where people follow other people, Facebook users can now subscribe News Feeds of non-friend Facebook user as well. But for this, a user (of whom you want to subscribe news feeds) should have his subscribers activated.
How to activate Subscribers?
For this, a user needs to look for Allow Subscribers under his profile picture in Profile tab. After activating there are 2 new tabs, Subscriptions and Subscribers. Subscriptions are People whose updates you’ve subscribed to and they will appear here. And under Subscribers, People who subscribe to your updates will appear.
Another option to activate subscribers is to go to: http://www.facebook.com/about/subscriptions and start allowing people to subscribe to your public updates. Subscriptions is an opt-in process and on your wish you can subscribe to it. The Subscribe feature is totally optional and you can choose not to subscribe to anybody, and you can choose to turn off the Subscribe button on your profile if you don’t want to gain any subscribers.
and Allowing subscribers
After you allow subscribers, a dialog box will appear. Here, you can set two preferences related to public subscriptions: commenting rules and new subscriber notifications. By default, only your friends and their friends can comment on your public updates. But you can choose to allow other people to comment on your public updates as well by selecting on from the dropdown menu in comments section of the dialog box.
So, what you can do with Subscribe button?
- Hear from Interesting People. Till now, you have heard what your Friends are saying on your wall and now you can subscribe to people you want to hear from. These can be journalists, celebrities, political figures and other people too.
- Fine Tuning the Subscription News Feed. You can use the Subscribe button to choose what you see from friends and other people you have subscribed to in your news feed. Even you have the option take complete control for each person and you could hide all game stories, if you want to just see photos – you can, and limit updates to life events and more.
There would be certain questions scrolling through your mind while browse this new Facebook subscribers feature. Like
- Why do all my friends have a ‘Subscribed’ button? It is because you have always been subscribed to them.
- Why don’t all profiles have a Subscribe button? Because certain people haven’t activated the Subscribers option yet.
After activation, it can be used to configure which news appear in a user’s news feed. It depends on which updates to important updates only. There are many other options as well to select the types of updates that can be posted to a news feed. These could be status updates, photos, games or live events.
Another question that comes in mind is What is the difference between Page and Subscribers then. If you are a business, company or organisation then you can use Page and for Individuals it is Subscribers. Some more differences between Page and Subscribers can be read here http://www.facebook.com/publicfigures.
How to find Subscriptions?
Facebook will start showing suggestions of people you can subscribe to in a section on the right-hand side of your Facebook home page based on the interests and other Facebook algorithms. It would be much similar to the People You May Know section. There is option to subscribe to people by viewing updates that come through your News Feed. This is possible when one of our friends comment or post an update on some one’s wall, we don’t know.
Choose What You See in News Feed
You’re already getting your friends’ posts in News Feed. With the Subscribed button, you can choose how much you see from them:
- All updates: Everything your friend posts
- Most updates: The amount you’d normally see
- Important updates only: Just highlights, like a new job or move
Get Your Own Subscribers
You need to post as public so that subscribers can see your updates. Facebook auto suggest feature may promote you as well. It is possible that like other features there is a invitation, recommendation button. And, a widget, a Subscriber button (like Like button) is likely to come soon for you to put on your website, webpage or blog. A Subscriber button, widget will show you profile picture, a subscribe button, number of subscribers etc.
Is there any limit on number of Subscriptions and Subscribers?
Yes, there is. It will allow an unlimited number of people who can subscribe to your public updates, but you can subscribe to a maximum of 5,000 people only.
Can you adjust News Feed flow in Subscribers?
Yes, you can or Facebook will do automatically like it do for your wall.
There are already 2 big giants offering this service already, Twitter and Google+ in the form of Followers. It’s now interesting to watch Facebook coming up with new features very frequently for both individuals and businesses.