Photography Unfiltered with Catherine Hall

Competition is getting fierce between photo-sharing networking sites.  There is no room for complacency (goodbye Flickr) and it certainly is survival of the fittest.  Perhaps one of the best parts of g+ coming out with its simple but oh-soooo-sweet photo sharing interface is that it, naturally, has raised the bar and other social sharing sites are stepping up to the plate.  Facebook certainly sees the future of photos being an integral part of all communication and is investing a lot of its resources into making a better environment for the image obsessed.  I have been lucky enough to be a part of the beta testing group and believe me, they are listening and improving fast. This week Facebook takes big steps forward launching the new user-friendly Photos layout. The new design (which will start appearing in profiles and pages over the next few weeks) introduces a photo presentation with several improved features in an easy to navigate format.

Hover Feature:

• Users can hover over an image to comment, like or highlight a photo without ever leaving the initial page.
• Photo Stats are now visible when you place the cursor over an image. This allows for users to interact with their photo stats or easily untag an image.
• Google + Users will feel comfortable with the similar-style photo layout.

  

Larger Photo Size:

• Images will no longer appear as small thumbnails!
• New image size allows users to scan through tagged and shared photos in a continuous timeline style.
• When images are clicked on they expand to the full size of the screen, allowing viewer the capability to scroll through hassle-free.

Photos Layout :

• The square layout now utilize the screen-space more efficiently and minimizes sidebar white space.
• Three new tabs at the top of the screen filter- shared photos, tagged photos and albums you’ve created.
• The new and improved larger square arrangement creates a mosaic style within all of your tabs.

Highlight Star :

• The highlight star enlarges the size of the photos and arranges the rest in a fashion which is more visually flattering.
• The highlight tool shows friends and followers which images are most important to you.

Only bummers is that there is no way to re-position your square album images like you can in timeline. Hopefully this will be a feature they roll out in the near future.  I also wish that the photo view was able to shine sin ads (one can hope….).

Interested in learning more?

Check out Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection and The Verge

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