Although today we will be talking about Facebook's new Subscribe Button, this will be part of a series as we follow Facebook's attempt to rival new competitor Google+.  

Facebook's been "hard at it" with their new Inline Profile Controls, improved Smart Friend Lists and most recently the Subscribe Button. We'll talk about other new features in upcoming blogs.

Facebook's new Subscribe Button - It's all Good!

• You can now use your personal profile to share public updates with a large audience.
• A profile with subscribers is ideal if you want to personally connect with people who are interested in you.
• You must opt-in (give permission to Facebook) in order to be subscribed to.

Once activated, Facebook asks whether to allow ANYONE to comment on your public status updates — if you turn this on, then people who aren’t on your friend list can comment, even if you don’t allow this on your wall.

Choose whether you want to receive notifications about new subscribers, and if so, whether to notify you about ANYONE or just friends of friends. Choose these settings carefully to avoid a cluttered inbox.

Once you have allowed subscribers, people can become subscribers by clicking the Subscribe button at the of your profile. Once someone subscribes to you, they will begin seeing your public updates in their News Feed.

People may also discover your profile through the People to Subscribe To unit on the right-hand side of their Home Page, or through their friends’ News Feed stories

When you post something on Facebook, you can control how broadly it is shared. You can decide to share publicly, with all of your friends, or with more limited lists of people.  

Public updates are posts that you share with the Public privacy setting. All of your public posts will be eligible to appear in your subscribers’ News Feeds. 

Use the Subscribe button to choose what you see from friends and others in News Feed. For each person, you could hide all game stories, see just photos, limit updates to life events and more. You've always been subscribed to your friends. With the Subscribe button, you can choose which of their updates you get.

Subscribers can see only the things you share publicly. They can also choose how many and what types of these public updates they get.

Here's a look at my public profile:

To manage your subscriptions, visit your personal profile and click on the “subscriptions” link below friends.