Up until now it was not really easy to customize what appears in your news feed and what not. That’s a big issue if you do not want to see game updates in your feed or would like to read new posts from a Facebook user that you do not want to or cannot befriend.
The new Facebook subscribe button supposedly takes care of this by providing users with better news feed controls.
The button will appear later this week on profiles of friends and other users provided that they have activated the feature for non-friends.
The button serves three main purposes according to Facebook’s Zach Rait, who posted the news on the official Facebook blog.
The button can be used to choose what Facebook users see from people in their news feed, to read news from users who are not friends and to provide others with options to read your news if they are not your friend.
The subscribe button when opened can be used to configure which news appear in a user’s news feed.
This ranges from all updates over most updates to important updates only. There are further options to select the types of updates that should be posted to a news feed. This can be status updates, photos, games or live events.
Facebook users who do not want anything to change can just ignore the button to receive the same amount of news as before.
Subscribe buttons will also be displayed on other people’s pages, like journalists, political figures, celebrities or artists. The subscribe button can be used to subscribe to the news that get posted by that person. The news are then automatically integrated into the standard news feed on Facebook.
The new subscribe page offers information about the procedure. It is an opt-in process which means that users need to enable it on Facebook before it becomes available on their profile.
What’s your take on the new subscribe button on Facebook?
Update: The subscribe button is now available for all Facebook users on the website.