Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites. It has over 1 billion active users and is one the most visited websites of all time. Facebook can be used by individuals and businesses. You can create a Facebook profile for personal use, a Page for a business, a band or a fictional character and a Group for special interests.
When you create a profile on Facebook, you can add friends to your contact list and when they update their status or share links and images, you get notified about it on your News Feed.When you create a Facebook Page, you cannot add friends. On the other hand, people can subscribe to your page by clicking the ‘Like’ button and know about your updates, links and pictures you post. There is no limit for the number of people who can subscribe to your Page and this is convenient for business and special interest groups. You can even create badges of your Page and embed them on your blog or website. When someone who visits your website clicks the ‘Like’ button on the badge, they are subscribed to your news feed. This tool has been of great use for internet marketing and lead generation.
Facebook Groups on the other hand does not have news feeds or updates and rather it is a stripped down version of internet forums. When you join a group, you can interact with other users who are in the group and share pictures, videos and links on the group’s Wall. Just like Facebook Pages, Groups do not have limits on the number of users who join. Although Facebook removed the discussion threads from Groups, the popularity of Groups has not come down.
When you create a Facebook profile for individual use, you have a limit on the number of friends you can add. Facebook initially had 10,000 as the upper limit and later bought it down to 5,000 claiming that people were misusing the feature. But Facebook added a new feature called ‘Subscribe’. Facebook also changed the privacy settings and you now have the ability to share the update or post with any one on Facebook or you can limit it to your friends and even share it with a selected group of friends.
When you enable the subscription feature, apart from people adding you as friends, they can subscribe to your posts and when you update your status or share a link or an image, those who have subscribed will be notified about your posts. In order to allow subscribers to be notified about your updates and posts, you will have to change the post’s visibility settings to “Public”. Although you can set it as default, it is recommended that you select the visibility option on individual posts. This way, you can be sure that your privacy won’t be compromised.
Recently, Facebook changed the ‘Subscribe’ label to ‘Follow’. Facebook claims that this change will help people understand what they are doing. When someone clicks the new ‘Follow’ button, they will know that they are going to follow the person’s updates. The ‘Follow’ button has been widely used on various social media platforms and has been on WordPress and Twitter for a very long time. Most critics and web analysts say that this is a move to make Facebook look like Twitter.
Although the ‘Subscribe’ feature has not had huge success or following, this move might change it for good. Maybe the company believes that people will learn that the ‘Subscribe’ feature is similar to Twitter’s ‘Follow’. Nonetheless, we have to wait to see how the name change is received by Facebook users.
Author's Bio: Andrea Walters, a freelance writer for www.globalx.net – The Nation’s Lowest All-Digital Price Provider. click here
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