Facebook Photos have remained in fairly low-quality for far too long but finally the snap happy folk at the social network are doing something about it. They’ve also deployed a host of new tweaks to turn Facebook Photos into a true Flickr fighter. Hop through to see how Facebook has powered up its case for hosting your pics…
Sam Odio, product manager for Facebook Photo popped up on the Facebook blog to announce the new features which are being rolled out over the next month (as with new Twitter you may find yourself waiting a while for them). He was critical of the current Facebook Photos experience calling it “clumsy” and promised the new version will be a big jump forward.
Image sizes in Facebook Photo are getting an overhaul with support for high-res photos above the previous 720 pixel resolution limit. Tagging will also be made seriously speedier and the photo upload tool had had a redesign, ditching the old Java tech that currently powers it.
Odio also offered more detail on the Facebook Photos face detection smarts that were teased earlier this year (and came from Divyshot, Odio’s startup which was gobbled up by the social network). He stressed that Facebook Photos isn’t going to add the kind of facial-recognition packed into Picasa and iPhoto just yet : “Right now, we want to stay away from that because it’s a very touchy subject.”
The new Facebook Photos will also introduce a new viewing function which is likely to give Flickr something to worry about. Rather than loading a new page for every photo, it’ll load them directly on top of the same page. Odio promises that’ll be faster and mean you can look at photos straight from the news feed.
Hit the comments and let us know what you think of the new Facebook Photos plans. Are you a fan of keeping your snaps on the social network or are you a confirmed Flickr fan?
Out now | £free | Facebook
