Los Angeles — It seems that popular social network leader Facebook was not happy with their “Subscribe” feature, and over the weekend social giant announced it would make a wording tweak and change its terminology for profile “Subscriptions” to “Follows,” adopting the same phrasing as social network rival Twitter.
Surprisingly, the term “subscribe” obviously never caught on with members, so Facebook has decided to dump it away in favor of something more universally recognizable: “follow”.
“We noticed that “follow” is a word that sounds much better with people on the service. Nothing is changing about how the feature works,” a Facebook spokesperson said.
In fact, the social media hub took a page — or rather, a word — from Twitter and introduced the Subscribe button in September 2011, allowing you to get updates from people you were not friends with – similar to the act of following someone on Twitter.
But Facebook is not even mentioning remotely about that. Instead, in a statement, the company said that it is making the change across the site because “we found as a term it resonates better with people on the service.” Which means, of course, that Facebook thinks “follow” will certainly lead to more…subscribers.
More so, the social network company has been undergoing testing to find ways to best engage influencers’ and fans using the site. As the company is switching out the terms across the site, which means everywhere you now see subscribe — on Timelines and Interest Lists — you will soon see follow, and subscribers will now be called followers. The gradual rollout will take a few weeks to reach all members.
While Facebook hesitated, for apparent reasons, to make a more direct correlation to Twitter’s with using the same term when it first introduced, it is exploring now and will replace Subscribe with Follow.
As a matter of fact, the indispensable purpose of this feature is to allow users to connect with celebrities, journalists, politicians, and the like. Inside Facebook reports that Facbeook has reportedly been working on a subscribe button for pages, as well. Users would be able to see the content from brands that they are interested in but not yet committed to “liking”.
On the other hand, Facebook introduced the subscribe feature just over a year ago so that users could receive updates from people on Facebook that they are not friends with. The feature will still work the same, according to Facebook. It will just have a new name.
It seems the change is still rolling out. For now, for instance, Mark Zuckerberg still has 16 million “subscribers.”
While Twitter is not like to initiate action for Facebook’s adoption of the term, it is worth noting that the social network is in legal trouble for a similar reason. A complaint was filed against Facebook by CVG-SAB for infringing on the company’s trademark over almost identical Want buttons that serve similar purposes.