6 ms·

Like many of the other features Facebook has announced recently (friend lists), this is a redesign of a feature they've had for years.

• baddox 15y ago
  Is that so? I've been using friends lists for years, but I don't recall there being a one-way subscription feature in facebook.
  • hvs 15y ago
    It is basically what they called "Pages".
  • joshhepworth 15y ago
    It's definitely a big redesign of the feature, but it was still possible before. As noted by TC last year, http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/20/facebook-not-now-follow/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/20/facebook-not-now-follow/, when you request to be someone's friend, you would automatically start following their "Everyone" posts without their approval. It was just following and friend requests in a single button.
    • jmjerlecki 15y ago
      This a pretty big difference though. Becoming someones friend on facebook has social implications. By friending someone you get stuck in the friend limbo stage (do I know this person, is this person a stalker, why wasn't there a message attached to the friend request, all sorts of weird things). By making this subscribe, the other person doesn't have to approve your request in essence because they decided that when they made their post public.
  • Raphael 15y ago
    It happens when you "like" a page. And this became even more prominent when profile interests were changed to be liked pages.