HUGE: Facebook Testing New “Subscribe To” User Feature
Facebook is in the process of testing a new feature which lets you subscribe to all the actions of a specific user. In other words, you can receive notifications anytime a specific user takes an action on Facebook. It also appears to be Facebook’s answer to Twitter’s follow feature. As a Facebook user who has seen the feature explained to us, “By subscribing you don’t miss any updates from people you subscribe to.”
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(The rest of the article is on the website which you can access by following the link)
Honestly, this feature has its good and bad points.The good is, your top news and feeds aren't spammed by randoms you don't really care about, and you can finally get feeds only from those you want to follow. The bad is, even if I want to follow someone, I'm not sure I want to follow that someone that closely, especially if its someone I see in school all the time. And I'm sure most people don't want that either, unless they have some kind of attention seeking problem.
It'd be like "Hey I just saw your update on facebook 5 minutes ago!" Then an hour later, you'll be continuing a conversation with someone else in real-life that was actually started on facebook as a status update. And that's not counting the conversations started off tweets.
I had a friend who suggested that maybe if the "stalkee" had to approve subscribe requests it might take away some of the scary "stalkerish-ness" of the whole thing. I totally agree. But once that is done, can you unsubscribe the person from yourself if he/she turns out to be a real stalker and more than a little creepy? If it works like twitter, I'm guessing no. So you're going to have this weird person hanging off the fringes watching your feeds, and even if you block this person they might still be able to see your feeds. Scary? Damn hell yeah.
It also presents one very potentially awkward situation. Facebook was trumpeting this as a tool for friends and family to follow one's updates, but I'm pretty sure some people would never want their moms and dads to see just what they get to on facebook. However, if they ask, how would you say no to them? Now, hasn't this tool suddenly became a lot more awful than you'd think?
I'd say no to this stalker button. But that's just me.