What is the difference between being friends, ‘liking’ someone’s page, and ‘subscribing’?

Being Friends

Being friends with someone on Facebook was meant to mean that you actually knew that individual. When you wanted to connect with someone you had to ask to be friends with them and they had to approve. By the same token, you had to approve friend requests to YOUR personal profile. All of your friend’s posts would flow through your newsfeed and vice versa.

You cannot control which of your friend’s posts display in your newsfeed; but, you can control which information you share on THEIR newsfeed. Facebook has a lists feature that makes it easy to do this. We’ll talk about using lists in another article.

Liking A Fan Page or Business Page

When you click Like on a Facebook Page, or even content off of Facebook, you are making a connection. It will show on your wall (timeline) that you liked that page and may also appear in your News Feed. Facebook Pages you like may post updates to your News Feed or send you messages. You can unlike something at any time, or control who can see your likes on your profile (timeline). See our earlier article, “What It Means to Like a Facebook Page”.

Being a Subscriber

If you are interested in seeing someone’s news feed but you are NOT friends with that person (they could be a celebrity or blogger), you could just subscribe. Also, you can choose just how subscribed you want to be! Do you want to receive all updates, most updates, only important updates, only photos, etc? Choosing what you see is optional.

When you subscribe to someone, who is not also a friend, you will get only their public updates to your News Feed. If they subscribe to your profile they will get only your public updates to their News Feed.

Any friends you already had on your Facebook profile before the subscriber option was added, have been automatically subscribed to your profile, just as you are now automatically subscribed to their profile.

Do You Want To Allow People To Subscribe To Your Profile?

If you’d like to share your public updates with more than just friends (optional), you can get a subscribe button on your profile too, by going to the subscribe page and clicking allow subscribers. Once you allow subscribers, you can decide who can comment and what notifications you get. You’ll also see a subscribers tab on your profile, where you can see who subscribes to you.

Personally, we like the new subscribe option. Share your comments with us — we’d love to hear what you think about Facebook’s new subscribe feature.

This article is part of a series written about Facebook and how you can use it effectively for your business. Future articles will include pointers on how to brand the favourites boxes below your cover image, which apps could be beneficial, managing posts, and a whole lot more of Facebook Timeline features.

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Original Ginger is a Digital Agency located in the heart of historic Fort Langley, a hip and artistic suburb of Vancouver BC.