On September 14, 2011, Facebook announced the release of new feature, the Subscribe Button for profile page on Facebook. This new features will help Facebook to support and provide publicly available content, which helps for its position in the search market.
Till now, the users did not have a functionality to control over what shall appear in there news feeds. Since now users would have subscribe button on their profile, one can decide upon what all updates they wish to see from another users on Facebook.
3 Main Functions of the Subscribe Button:
The subscribe button, which Facebook promises to appear on users profile over the next few day will allows you to:
1. Choose exactly what you wish to view from people profile in your news feed:
Facebook users already had this feature where they receive the news feeds from people linked in there profile. Now the subscribe button would help you to customize the same and you can decide upon which update should appear in your news feeds (eg: just highlight like current city or relationship status). Furthermore, users can also choose how much of what type of content they want to display such as photos games, or nothing at all.
2. Subscribe to people who aren’t added to your profile or in simple words who are not your friends:
If user enables the Subscribe button for his/her profile, then you can subscribe to view updates from those users in your news feed. This is a great advantage for political figures, artists, bloggers,etc. Who don’t want hoards of friends but do want the ability to spread their message to others.
3. Allow others to subscribe to your updates:
Conversely, you can enable subscribe button on your own profile and start generating subscribers to your updates as well. This allow you to share your updates and content with more than just to friends.To enable the Subscribe Button on your own profile, visit Facebook’s Subscription Page and click “Allow Subscribers.”
With the increasing popularity of Facebook Users and fast building up of human networks, the number of news feeds that appears in ones profile is much like of spam, So now users get one step more in selecting the data that they wish to view and if you want to market your business online this feature will now help one to circulate there content online publicly, make sure you allow your content for subscription. For businesses and brands already there has been Facebook Fanpage to promote there business and also they can use custom facebook fanpage to make it more interactive.
Facebook provides the following chart to show just how Pages and Subscriptions are affected: