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Facebook adds 'subscribe' feature to comments

Link allows users to follow the public comments made by other users who have enabled the Subscribers feature.

Steven Musil Night Editor / News
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. He's been hooked on tech since learning BASIC in the late '70s. When not cleaning up after his daughter and son, Steven can be found pedaling around the San Francisco Bay Area. Before joining CNET in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers.
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Steven Musil
Facebook's new comment subscribe button. Screenshot by Steven Musil/CNET

Facebook has added a "subscribe" button to its comments box plugin, allowing users to follow comments made by users who have enabled Subscribers.

The new link allows users to subscribe to commenters with one click, and gives commenters another way to grow their subscriber base, Facebook said. In some cases, it will also show a subscriber count next to the button.

The link will only appear on public comments made by Facebook users who have allowed other users to subscribe their updates.

The move is an evolution of the subscribe button the social-networking giant added last month to user profiles, which gives users the option of subscribing to all, most, or only important updates the other person posts to the site. Those updates show up in the user's news feed.

Facebook is also letting people subscribe to news feeds of users they're not friends with. Upon doing so, they will see the public updates the person has shared on their profile. And like with friends, users will be able to determine how many of those updates they will see in their news feed.