One of the most popular activities on social media network Facebook is sharing photos. In fact, according to a Facebook blogpost over 250 million photos are uploaded each day and it was only apt that the network introduce some improvements to the way users experience photos.
On Friday, Facebook product manager, Justin Shaffer, posted that Facebook was rolling out a more streamlined photo viewer that features a cleaner interface that makeS it easier to enjoy photos. “The light box is now set against a simple white background that puts more of the focus on the photo and less on the surrounding frame,” he said. The first version of the photo viewer was launched earlier this year and based on the feedback received from users, Facebook made changes to it before releasing it again.
In addition, Facebook has also rolled out a new version of its popular photo apps, with speed improvement and larger images. Shaffer said, “ Now, the photos you share on Facebook are bigger (720 pixels to 960 pixels) and load twice as fast, giving you quicker access to more detailed images,” he said.
Shaffer confirmed that photos which are already uploaded to the users’ profile would also be displayed at the higher resolution.
In February of this year, Facebook rolled out its revamped Photos interface with the lightbox user interface and support of high resolution photos.
The photos update that made Facebook a viable way to share high-quality photos, came in September 2010, when it launched the black lightbox-based photo viewer and supported photos as large as 2048 pixels in width. Even though it does not actually display these large photos in the viewer, you can download them at this size.
A couple of days back it was also reported that Facebook has decided to add a photo-filter services to its mobile app. According to the New York Times, the feature has been ready for sometime now, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg wanted to add even more filters than the 12 already developed, before it is launched.
This is a direct challenge to Instagram which, it is rumored, Facebook tried to acquire and failed, this summer. Similar to the feature which made Instagram popular, Facebook too will have the same old-time film filters. Moreover, Instagram doesn’t have an app for Android as yet, which should prove to be good news for Facebook.