Facebook’s New Subscribe Function: Public Is The New Private

But is this additional choice when it comes to accessing celebrities’, co-workers or even your long-lost love’s status updates a step too far? Is this another potential controversy relating to Facebook’s on-going privacy issues? Or does it finally offer Facebook users the ability to only receive the information they want? Mat Murray, Online Content Manager for fuse8, had a look at the new feature, and subscribed to Kelly Brook’s profile for research purposes only.

Great! So Facebook now has followers! Great, right? Well, yes, and no. With Facebook’s new Subscribe feature, you can now see people’s updates without having to friend them. This is perfect for when you want to follow a celebrity on Facebook. But hang on, don’t we already have Pages for that function? Well, yes. But now you can subscribe to Pages! At least, Pages of an individual, (as opposed to an organisation or brand). But, but, bu.. ok. I’m lost.

And that’s where this new Subscribe feature is just a bit confusing, even from a tech nerd such as myself. So up to now, I could request someone’s friendship on Facebook, that’s easy to understand. And I can Like a page of a celebrity, brand or organisation to get their latest updates. Again, this makes sense and shows a clear difference between your personal friends, and brands, celebs and organisations you only want to hear from on a one-way basis.

But why would I want to subscribe to a friend’s updates? Well it’s not about what you want, it’s about what they want. You can still always request the friendship of that cool guy from school, but chances are he doesn’t want you as a friend. He didn’t want you as a friend then, and he doesn’t want you as a friend now.

But you’re not giving up, and thanks to Facebook’s new Subscription feature, you don’t have to. Because providing Hank (they were always called Hank, right?) posts a lot of public updates, you can still see what he’s up to, thereby completing your life goal of being close to Hank.

This new Subscription option has only been made possible thanks to some other changes Facebook recently implemented. In late August, Facebook made it easier to understand who sees your published content by allowing you to post status updates to different friend lists or groups.

These new privacy options finally make sense thanks to the Subscribe offering. Users who were previously worried about privacy can now tailor individual status updates, pictures, links and anything else they decide to post to Facebook. With the new Subscribe option, people can now effectively run a two-tier Facebook profile; deciding to post personal family pictures and information to Friends only, and links with videos of animals falling over to the public at large.

But how will this affect Facebook in the future? Will celebrities who have posted their professional comings and going on a Facebook Page be compelled to use their personal profile, making sure to posting only certain updates to their Subscribers? Brands and Organisations will still use Pages, but I can see celebrities going down the Subscriber route.

Personally, this has changed my view about what Facebook is, and what it can be. Before I saw Twitter as a public information service, and Facebook was just for friends. Facebook, was, for me, about friends finding out about me and my personal life, whereas Twitter was for work stuff and more general tweets about the state of the world/what I was eating that day. Although I don’t see myself picking up many Subscribers, it’s already made me think differently about privacy with Facebook, and I genuinely think I can see myself posting certain articles, pictures and news publicly now.

So are these recent changes a result of increased competition from Twitter and Google+? Almost certainly. Is ‘Subscribe’ the new ‘Follow’? Possibly. But is Kelly Brook finally going to subscribe to my cat picture updates on Facebook? Probably not.