Facebook Changes its Subscribe Button to Follow

Facebook will no longer ask users to “Subscribe”, instead it opts to change to “Follow”. The subscribe button that people have placed on their websites will now appear as follow buttons. This change will be reflected on the profile pages of all users who have enabled the subscribe feature.

As reported by The Verge, a statement made by the company said, “Starting today we are updating the term “Subscribe” to become “Follow” across the site as we found it is a term that resonates better with people on the service. Nothing is changing about how the feature works.”

Facebook launched the subscribe button, earlier in September 2011. This feature allows users to have a complete control over what friends share. Users are able to follow other people without needing to add them to the friends list. For many people subscribing sounds like asking for a magazine/newsletter subscription. When users click the follow button on someone’s Facebook page, they will be able to view their public updates in their News Feed.

The subscribe(now follow) has always been a one-sided feature. Facebook has captured the term “follow” from Twitter, Tumblr, and other web services.