Facebook’s swiped an idea from Twitter and has introduced a new ‘subscribe’ button, allowing users to focus on the news they’re most interested in and also follow celebrities.
With the new button, users can control the content they see from their friends in their news feed and communicate both ways with people who aren’t friends.
“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,” says the company’s Zach Rait.
“You also couldn’t hear directly from people you’re interested in but don’t know personally — like journalists, artists and political figures.”
Users can now select whether the’d like to see most updates, as now, or whether they’d like all updates or important ones only. They can also specify only photos, for example, or ‘no stories about games’ from another.
Also new is the ability to follow celebrities in the same way as on Twitter, by clicking the ‘subscribe’ button that appears on their profile. Public updates will then appear on the user’s news feed.
It’s also possible to filter what updates appear from celebrities, in the same way as with personal friends.
If you think the world will be interested in your activities, you can go to the Subscriptions page and get a Subscribe button of your own.
The new button will start to appear in the next few days.
