WASHINGTON: Aiming towards simplifying its overall design for users, the social media conglomerate, Facebook has dropped the ‘like button’ from all of its public pages, which are generally used by public figures, artists, brands, etc.

According to Mashable, in a move towards helping users connect with different artists and brands in an easy manner, Facebook pages will now only show the number of followers along with a dedicated news feed section for users to join conversations, interact, and engage with others.

Facebook said in a blog that “We are removing Likes and focusing on Followers to simplify the way people connect with their favourite Pages. Unlike Likes, Followers of a Page represent the people who can receive updates from Pages, which helps give public figures a stronger indication of their fan base.”

This new update will gradually be rolled out to all the public pages officially in the forthcoming months. Last year in July, Facebook was spotted testing a new design for pages which included removing the ‘like button’ to give a cleaner design for pages.