Forget adding friends on Facebook, now you can Subscribe to them!
Facebook announced a few weeks ago changes to the privacy settings that would now allow you to post on your profile to “Public”, “Friends” and “Custom”.
The Public setting did not make any sense to me since there is no Public stream ala Google+. My assumption and what Facebook said was post to Public would be shown to anyone coming to your profile that aren’t your friends yet.
So kind of a way to posts things that you don’t mind non-friends seeing should they come to your profile. I looked at it as a way to post things to people to show I was interesting and warranted a friend request. I’ve been playing around with the idea of adding 5000 friends to my profile to see what that does to traffic to my sites. And so what I did was added a bunch of people I didn’t know to a List labeled “People I don’t know”.. Then made it so that those on that list couldn’t see pictures of my kids, my check-ins and etc. They’d only see stuff I made public or allowed them to see..
But… Today it has been announced by Facebook that now people that aren’t your friends can now “Subscribe” to you!! This is huge!!! Can we say GOOGLE+!!!??
So now if you allow people to subsribe to your Public posts they can see updates from you without you becoming their friend. This virtually eliminates the 5000 friend limitation in my opinion. So now you don’t have to be friends with people for them to see your posts on your profile.
I wonder what this will do to Facebook pages that individuals have because now there isn’t much need for them except for optin forms and fancy tabs I guess..
Below is an image taken right from the Facebook blog about the new feature:
While I still hate the argument that Google+ is a “Facebook Killer” I do think this will keep the average Joe from playing around with Google+ now. If you are a marketer or business person I would allow this Subscribe ASAP so more people can follow you..
If you want to subscribe to my Facebook profile go HERE.
Here is a quick video walk thru of how to set it up:
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How to tag if he have a new Timeline? :|
NikolaFreeRunner Tagging is still the same. Use the @ symbol if you are a friend with them.
I don't know that this changes things a lot for me. I use my personal profile for friends and family and my page for business and have no desire to change that. I think the fancy tabs and reveal option, opt-in box, etc. are a huge advantage of a page. Thanks for your insights here, I'm still open to thinking about it differently and I appreciate your look at it!
P.S., if you are soliciting input on livefyre, I'm not a fan. I would normally skip commenting if I had to sign in. Just FYI.
@JenniferHerndon Out of all the platforms we've tried I like it the best because of the ability to tag people from Facebook and Twitter in a comment by using the @ symbol. Plus the backend is nice too.
And almost all commenting platforms make you login one way or the other. And you could login using FB or Twitter with this.. Thanks for the input!
@ScottAyres@JenniferHerndon And just to add a bit to that, we'll be rolling out guest commenting in the next few weeks so that users can join the convo without having to create an account.
BTW, that Facebook "thumbs up" on the right side may be the biggest one I've ever seen in my entire life. VERY impressive.
@ScottAyres@JenniferHerndon I like most of the features except for the Livefyre profile which shows all of your blogging activity on one page.
I understand why they did this but it will not help build connections or develop relationships the way FB initially planned. This will encourage one way communication, ala Twitter and disconnect journalists (further) high profile people and others with diva-like tendencies.
Does this mean that you can no longer protect your personal posts and pics (so strangers don't see photos of your kids, for example? cindymorus bizfinderlocal
well you must be special cus it's not working for me...I have the tab, but the app says click continue & it takes me to "unnati" ??!! Someone else posted on their app page she gets the same thing!
yes, thank you Scott...I also subscribed to you & am following you on twitter. :)
Tom Bender ~ Mindbender Marketing & Productions
http://www.facebook.com/mindbendermarketing
That was great information! Got myself subscribed, can't wait to see where this goes... Thanks for the heads up.
Norma Doiron @ the LEARNED Preneur
Ok excellent, that's what I was hoping/thinking. Thanks!!
@isis
I don't know that this changes things a lot for me. I use my personal profile for friends and family and my page for business and have no desire to change that. I think the fancy tabs and reveal option, opt-in box, etc. are a huge advantage of a page. Thanks for your insights here, I'm still open to thinking about it differently and I appreciate your look at it!
P.S., if you are soliciting input on livefyre, I'm not a fan. I would normally skip commenting if I had to sign in. Just FYI.
@JenniferHerndon Out of all the platforms we've tried I like it the best because of the ability to tag people from Facebook and Twitter in a comment by using the @ symbol. Plus the backend is nice too.
And almost all commenting platforms make you login one way or the other. And you could login using FB or Twitter with this.. Thanks for the input!
@ScottAyres@JenniferHerndon And just to add a bit to that, we'll be rolling out guest commenting in the next few weeks so that users can join the convo without having to create an account.
BTW, that Facebook "thumbs up" on the right side may be the biggest one I've ever seen in my entire life. VERY impressive.
@ScottAyres@JenniferHerndon I like most of the features except for the Livefyre profile which shows all of your blogging activity on one page.
@JenniferHerndon Yeah I think the advantage will be for authors, speakers, preachers, celebrities and etc that aren't using tabs for anything on their page and just want to post their thoughts. For a business pages are where you need to be for sure.
Yes and no Chris. I think it all depends on what you post publicly. For me it won't change much at all as the things I shared to the "everyone" setting now has a bigger audience. I think it does relieve the pressure of an author, pastor and etc from having to keep up with a profile and a page.
It was my understanding that personal profiles posts are not indexed by search engines which was a benefit of having a Facebook page. Did that change since Facebook added the term "public" to their post option? Pages and personal profiles are two different things for different purpose. You can't conduct business, contests or have custom pages on a personal profile which is a big plus for pages.
@GenevieveLachance All posts made public can be seen by anyone that comes across your profile, no word if it is indexed on the search engines. And yes if you are running a business pages are where you should be. As I mentioned in another comment this is a huge advantage for bloggers, authors, speakers, preachers and etc that just want to get their message out and aren't concerned about the biz side of pages.
The next time I log into the full version of FB (versus mobile as of right now) I'll be back to offer an opinion.. I'm looking forward to it as a business to business way to stay in touch on FB.
I understand why they did this but it will not help build connections or develop relationships the way FB initially planned. This will encourage one way communication, ala Twitter and disconnect journalists (further) high profile people and others with diva-like tendencies.
Does this mean that you can no longer protect your personal posts and pics (so strangers don't see photos of your kids, for example? cindymorus bizfinderlocal
@CindyHankMoruscindymorusbizfinderlocal No.. Well maybe.. Anything you post public anyone can see. So if you only post that stuff to friends the public can't see it. Just make sure you don't post public and your subscribers will never see it.
@TomBender Thanks Tom!
will do ....thanks :-)
It's not an app for a page. This is a feature for your personal profile. Not sure you're looking at the correct thing. ~Scott
well you must be special cus it's not working for me...I have the tab, but the app says click continue & it takes me to "unnati" ??!! Someone else posted on their app page she gets the same thing!
It's active now.. ~Scott
yes, thank you Scott...I also subscribed to you & am following you on twitter. :)
Tom Bender ~ Mindbender Marketing & Productions
http://www.facebook.com/mindbendermarketing
Hi Scott, do you know when it's going to be active? I have the tab but the app isn't available yet?
@NormaDoiron My pleasure Norma!
That was great information! Got myself subscribed, can't wait to see where this goes... Thanks for the heads up.
Norma Doiron @ the LEARNED Preneur
@BerniceWood Glad we could help Bernice!
I love that just as soon as I think I have Facebook figured out, they change something else! I am just glad there are folks like you that can interpret the changes into something I can understand! Spoon feed me! :)
Bernice
@SolvitaBennett Glad I could help!
@SusanPreston Yeah I haven't accepted friend requests for a long time because they weren't really friends.. I had just changed my Friend Lists so I could add these people and then limit what they see. But this changes everything!
It's a Twitter/Google+ function yes.. ~Scott
this is more of a Twitter function isnt it?
Thank you, for the great information Scott! This just came in the nick of time for me, as I am close to my 5000 limit and have almost 500 friend requests sitting there. Sahhhweet!
Thanks for this - I wouldn't notice!!! This is great!
@KatMoody Very true.. FB won't be hurt by G+ much.. They'll lose some tech nerds but that's it.. Twitter should be worried...
Here's a good tool from Facebook giving more detail about the feature. https://developers.facebook.com/attachment/Subscriptions_PublicFigures_final.pdf/ ~Scott
I LOVE this feature Scott - thanks so much for sharing it! I keep seeing Facebook make adjustments to compete with Google+ (even if that isn't the initial goal *laughs* yeah right) and LOVE it ... I never thought Google+ would kill Facebook, but I did think it would lose some folks to Google+ if they didn't want to make some changes. It looks like they are paying attention!
I think this is crazy cool!!!
Ok excellent, that's what I was hoping/thinking. Thanks!!
You are correct Laurent. ~Scott
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[...] 1) The biggest change was the addition of the “Subscribe” button on all Facebook profiles. You do have to turn it on of course. The ramifications of it are huge. To see more go here: Forget adding friends on Facebook, now you can Subscribe to them! [...]