Los Angeles – In a fresh move to swiftly share photos amongst its vast audience, the social network leader Facebook has recently started testing an automatic Photo Sync feature for iOS users that uploads photos from the phone’s photo album directly to a private Facebook album.
The social giant initially commenced testing the feature for its Android users around two months ago, but now the company has finally worked out how to incorporate background auto-uploads and is now testing Photo Sync with a few select iOS users.
According to TechCrunch reported Monday that a tipster shared a screenshot and Facebook confirms iOS Photo Sync is a continuation of its two-month old test for Android. So, by activating the feature, the app quietly uploads new photos taken by the device to a private photo album on Facebook.
Here is how Facebook Photo Sync functions, at least for those few lucky enough to be in the test. And fair warning, it probably would not be there for you and Facebook could scrap the feature instead of rolling it out. Anyways…you can go to the Photos app in the Facebook For iOS app’s sidebar navigation or the photos section of your Timeline and scroll to the bottom. There you may find an option to check out Photo Sync and then activate it, as seen in this photo sent in by tipster YoloFahad (an Instagrammer-extraordinaire).
As a matter of fact, automatic photo uploading does not automatically publish photos to your public stream. Rather, as Facebook describes here, users can see the synced photos album on Facebook later and select the ones they want to make public manually. Users get 2GB of storage space for photos. Photo Sync is already available on Android.
Besides, users can also have the option to choose to sync photos over Wi-Fi and cellular, Wi-Fi only or turn off sync all together. Over a cellular network, Facebook will shrink the photos to 100KB size and the upload the smaller version to save on data transfer costs. Photo Sync is currently under testing mode and might not be available to all users.
Admittedly though, this latest development comes not long after Facebook changed the EdgeRank algorithm that determines what you see on your Facebook news feed. That change has de-emphasized photo-only posts, which had been getting very high ranking, compared to text-only status updates.
Having said that, only those fortunate Facebook mobile users will see the new feature, and to check if you are in the test loop, go to the Facebook app, tap the menu icon at top left, and then tap your name or icon. Once you are at your timeline page, tap photos. If you see an option to turn on automatic syncing, then you are in the loop.
But then, of course, it surely raises a question: how much do you trust Facebook? Facebook has had its share of privacy blunders in the past and even bugs which delayed deletion of photos users supposedly deleted.