Facebook added two features to its Personal profiles: Subscribers and Close Friends lists.
The Facebook Subscribe Button
You can now grant non-friends the ability to see and follow the public posts you add to your personal profile without “friending” them. This new feature is an opt-in program, so those who are interested need to first allow for subscribers.
Facebook has a helpful Q&A for how its Subscribe button function works.
You can access the list of your subscriptions and subscribers via links beneath your profile photo.
Facebook Close Friends List
As your number of personal Facebook friends has grown, you may have found it increasingly difficult to keep up with the updates of those whom you care about most. Facebook has built out their Lists feature to provide users the chance to see their favorite people’s updates and photos all in 1 place.
Introducing the new Close Friends list:
All lists can be accessed from the left sidebar.
Then once your lists are created, choose the one you want your update to be shown to from the drop down menu that appears at the bottom of the Status Update box.
Have you taken advantage of either Facebook improvement?
I haven’t used the subscribe button, but I love the close friends feature. It’s so nice to be able to see the few people I talk to most often in one place.
I think the subscribe option is interesting. Especially for people who have a lot of friends on their list and don’t have room to add more.
As far as the new list feature is concerned, I had lists set up over a year ago. I’ve always posted things to limited groups when I wanted to share more private things, and viewed my newsfeed through the lists. I know the new “close friends” list is new, but the list functionality has been around for a long time.
I’m not a fan of the lists. The one thing I wish would actually work is the unsubscribe button. It’s supposed to allow the ability to unsubscribe from activities by friend. I’ve tried it time and again, and the crap keeps showing up. My preferred way of handling frequent posters is to hide them. Same goes for apps. That keeps my feed cleaner. I find the lists distracting since my eyes travel right to left. If they were on the left, I’d probably use them.