Facebook has announced its creating a version of its “Subscribe” button for websites, building on top of their launch a few months ago on user profile pages. The new Subscribe button will allow visitors to a website to subscribe to someone’s public status updates without having to leave the site. Users who choose to subscribe to updates from a website will still see them appear in their News Feed, just as if they had subscribed to the user within Facebook.

Joanna Shields, Facebook’s VP and managing director for Europe, Middle East and Africa made the announcement at Le Web 2011, but didn’t reveal when it would be available.

Facebook debuted its Subscriptions service for user profiles in September. Users who have opted into the service can have now choose to let people subscribe to their public updates, without having to be friends with the subscriber – an asymmetrical relationship option that Facebook had previously lacked but Twitter and Google+ both had.

The new button for the Subscription service moves it closer in-line with Twitter’s follow button functionality, which allows users anywhere on the web to follow someone’s Twitter account. Facebook is marketing the new button to public figures like celebrities, politicians and journalists.