Facebook Changes That Weren't a "Subscribe" Button

So the big Facebook news running rampant over the interwebs this morning was the addition of the "Subscribe" button to profile pages. Unlilke "Circling" a Google+ profile, you actually have to opt-in to having the button on your Facebook profile versus a Google+ profile being public. You can actually subscribe to my Facebook page here. You can read all about the new "Subscribe" button on just about any tech, marketing, or social blog out there right now so I won't regurgitate any info on that front. However, some teammates on our DIG team at Engauge discovered a few other things Mashable didn't necessarily report.

Sharing Text-Only Posts

Typically, most status updates (public ones anyway) that are from yourself or a brand that were text-only were only able to be engaged via Likes and/or Comments. The only posts with native Share functionality were photos, videos and external links. Now, text based links are sharable as well. So in addition to a Like and Comment count, there is now a Share count with a complete aggregation of all the shares listed. Check out these screen shots from Coca-Cola's page below to see. Hat tip to @ratpack and @cjo for finding this:

[cincopa A0EAitq43tW0]

This changes the way we should think about developing content for daily Facebook updates for brand pages. Not only will we be designing content for Likes and Comments but will be designing content for more Sharing as well. Should be interesting how this minor change will alter the way we approach Facebook engagement.

Like Page Recommendations

Teammate @reenazoid was the first to discover this (with our intern @oliviapatrick confirming). In the same way that you Like an external website link and give a recommendation, the same can now be done when you Like a Facebook fan page. So now, instead of a single line on your profile saying you liked ___ pages, there is now a large link that appears on your wall the same way other external links do. Now, you can not only Like a page but recommend that page to your social graph in a more descriptive and impactful way.

Now some of this may not be available across all Facebook accounts and there are a few other features @reenazoid and @_lrfound on the back-end that I didn't even touch. I'm curious to see if this any of this was an accidental rollout or if these features will be enhanced further post f8. We'll see.