Facebook allows users to follow people they don’t know personally without sending a friend request. When you follow someone, you can see their public posts in your News Feed. But following does not give you access to that person’s full profile or allow you to message them directly. There are a few reasons people choose to follow others on Facebook rather than adding them as friends:
- To keep up with news and updates from public figures, organizations, or brands they are interested in
- To discreetly keep tabs on acquaintances, coworkers, celebrities, or love interests
- To avoid overloading their main friend list with too many casual connections
Following allows for a more passive, one-sided connection than friending someone. It can be thought of as subscribing to their public updates without fully linking social profiles. Some users find it useful for lightweight stalking or gaining exposure to new perspectives and information sources. But in general, following indicates a much looser tie than friendship on Facebook.
How to Follow Someone on Facebook
If you want to follow someone on Facebook without sending a friend request, here are the steps:
- Go to their public profile page. You can search for them by name or navigate to their page through a mutual friend’s list.
- Click the “Follow” button near the top of their page, under their profile photo. The button will be labeled “Follow” if you aren’t already following them.
- That’s it! Once you click Follow, their public posts will start appearing in your News Feed. You’ll see a notification when they make a new post.
You can unfollow people at any time the same way – just click the “Following” button on their profile to stop seeing their posts. There’s no need to explicitly remove a follow connection.
Differences Between Following and Friending
Friending someone on Facebook creates a two-way, mutual connection if they accept your friend request. Following simply subscribes you to their public updates in a one-sided way. Here are some key differences:
Access to Profile and Posts
As a friend, you can see the entirety of someone’s Facebook profile (except for content they’ve restricted to specific friend lists). You can also view posts they’ve set to Friends Only. Following someone only gives you access to content they share publicly with all of Facebook. You won’t see any of their private information or posts.
Messaging and Interacting
You can message and interact freely with Facebook friends by commenting, liking, sharing, and reacting to their posts. But as a follower, your ability to comment and interact directly is limited. You can react to public posts with emoji, but you can’t comment on or share posts unless they are fully public. And you have no way to message someone you just follow.
Friend Lists and Groups
Friends can potentially add you to different friend lists or invite you to join private Facebook groups. But as a follower, you have no access to special friend content or groups. The only updates you’ll see are general public posts.
Notifications and Updates
Your Facebook friends will be notified when you post and may see your posts prominently ranked in their feeds. But your followers aren’t guaranteed to see all your updates since they aren’t prioritized the same as friends. The only notifications followers get are when you make a new public post.
Pros and Cons of Following Someone
Here are some key pros and cons to weigh when considering whether to follow someone on Facebook instead of sending a friend request:
Pros
- Follow publicly popular figures and organizations to see their updates
- Stay updated on acquaintances, coworkers, and love interests
- Avoid overloading your main Friends list
- One-sided connection doesn’t require approval or reciprocity
- Lower maintenance way to monitor public figures
- More discreet than friending someone
Cons
- Very limited profile and post access
- No messaging capabilities
- Fewer notifications and lower feed prominence
- Limited interaction abilities
- No access to specialized content or groups
- Impersonal feeling due to one-sided nature
In general, following is best reserved for public figures or very casual acquaintances. Reciprocal friendship is needed for closer ties.
Who Can See Your Followers and Follows?
Your full lists of followers and follows are private on Facebook by default. Other users can’t browse through and see who you follow or who follows you. The only visibility is if you specifically check on a mutual connection’s profile to see if they also follow someone. For example, if you and a friend both follow a public page, you could see that you both follow that page when looking at the mutual follow status on its profile. But your full list remains private.
Following Versus Subscribing
In addition to following individual profiles, you can also subscribe to public pages on Facebook operated by brands, organizations, or public figures. Doing this similarly subscribes you to their updates without friending anyone. The main differences are:
- You follow individual people, but subscribe to pages
- Pages don’t need to approve a subscription request
- Pages don’t have the ability to follow you back
- You can get notifications from pages by subscribing or liking them
Subscribing to a page serves much the same purpose as following an individual profile – it’s a one-way connection to see public updates from a source you’re interested in. Both allow you to see more updates without directly friending people.
Following Elsewhere on Social Media
The concept of following people has been popularized on social networks like Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. Facebook adopted its Following feature relatively recently to bring similar utility to its platform. Here’s how following compares on other major social sites:
Following people on Twitter subscribes you to their tweet updates. You can follow anyone without approval, and retweet or like their public tweets. Twitter doesn’t have a friending feature. Following allows lightweight, one-sided connections with anyone on Twitter.
Instagram also relies entirely on following people without any friending. You can follow accounts to see their public or followers-only posts in your feed or via their profiles. Interactions like commenting and messaging require a mutual follow.
TikTok
Following people on TikTok subscribes you to their public video updates. You’ll see their content in your Following feed. As on Twitter, TikTok has no friending and follows don’t need approval. You can like and comment on others’ public videos.
So on sites like Twitter and Instagram, following is the primary way to connect. Facebook uses following for more casual, low-commitment connections as an alternative to friending.
Is Following or Friending Better?
There are pros and cons to both following and friending on Facebook:
Benefits of following
- Stay updated without commitment
- One-sided connection
- No approval needed
- More discreet
Benefits of friending
- Access more profile and post info
- Mutual two-way connection
- Share posts, react, and comment
- Join groups and events together
- Appear connected on each other’s friend lists
In general, friending is better for closer ties since it enables more interaction. Following can be suitable for looser connections to public figures, new love interests, or acquaintances when you don’t want full friendship. Evaluate your goals and relationship to determine which option makes the most sense.
Following versus Liking Pages
Besides following profiles, liking Facebook pages is another way to subscribe to public updates from brands, celebrities, media outlets, and organizations. Here’s how following profiles and liking pages stack up:
| Following Profiles | Liking Pages | |
| Used for | Individual people | Organizations, businesses, brands |
| Connection | One-way | One-way |
| Approval needed? | No | No |
| Notifications | New posts only | All post options if turned on |
| Interactions | Limited | Full commenting, sharing, etc. |
In general, follow profiles to track individuals and like pages to track organizations. Pages allow more interactive options. The main overlap is being able to subscribe to public updates from both.
Find Out Who’s Following You
Wondering who’s following you or viewing your profile? Unfortunately Facebook doesn’t have an easy way to lookup your followers list. The main way to get clues is by watching post reactions and views. For example, if you see someone consistently reacting to your public posts, they likely follow you. You can also install a social media analytics app to glean more insight into your follower demographics. But unlike some sites like Instagram and Twitter, Facebook keeps follows private by default in both directions.
Conclusion
Following someone on Facebook creates a casual, one-way connection to see their public posts in your feed. It can be useful for keeping tabs on public figures, potential love interests, and new acquaintances without friending them. Following allows lightweight social media stalking. But for close connections, reciprocal Facebook friendship is better to enable full profile access, messaging, and group interactions. Evaluate your goals and relationship to a user to decide if following or friending makes more sense. Both give exposure to updates, but friending facilitates deeper social ties.