Facebook launches Subscribe button to control your News Feed
(CBS) - Today, Facebook announced the Subscribe button, a new feature that will allow users to control the types of stories on their News Feed. The feature, which is completely optional, will begin to roll out to users today, with a "full roll out in the coming days," says Facebook.
"Until now, it hasn't been easy to choose exactly what you see in your News Feed. Maybe you don't want to see every time your brother plays a game on Facebook, for example. Or maybe you'd like to see more stories from your best friends, and fewer from your coworkers," explains Facebook software engineer Zach Rait. "You also couldn't hear directly from people you're interested in but don't know personally."
If you opt to use it, it will help you decide:
1. How much you want to see: Decide if you want to see everything, the top stories or nothing at all.
2. What kinds of stuff you do and don't want to see: Filter on Photos, Game stories, etc.
However, if you don't choose to use the new Subscribe functionality, your Facebook experience won't change. Your News Feed will exist as usual.
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The Subscribe button can also help you weed out friends with lame posts (oh snap!) or bring front-and-center friends who have good posting cred, like political figures, artists, bloggers, journalists (ahem, ahem). To activate the Subscribe button for an interesting person, simply click the Subscribe button on his/her profile (if available) to get his/her updates - like (uhhh) Twitter.
On the other hand, if you want subscribers, you can share your public updates with more than just friends by adding a Subscribe button to your profile. Your followers can then see anything you post if you set it to "Public." Again, you'll have to opt in to take advantage of this feature. Otherwise, everything will remain unchanged.
Is this another move to compete with Google+? We don't know Facebook's motive, but we're excited to play with our profiles for sure.
Our friends at ZDNet have already started to plot. "Wait until the experimentation gets underway. For my purposes, I'm reducing the noise on my Facebook account big time. I'll probably only go with life events for most people. I care if you get divorced or have some big life change. You can spare me the details of your dinner and fun time in Jamaica. It'll also be interesting to see what Facebook's system deems important to you," explains editor-in-chief Larry Dignan. "Granted, I'm becoming a more anti-social social networking guy since I've been systematically shooting things that take up too much time, but you can see where I'm heading here."