On Monday, the world’s largest social network revealed the new feature of shared photo albums, allowing multiple users to upload images to the same album.
Previously Facebook users could only unload photos to albums they created, with the limit of 1,000 photos to each album. This new feature, aptly called “shared albums” enables users to create an album that can be shared with a total of 50 contributors, each of whom can contribute up to 200 photos.
According to Mashable, when building this feature Facebook engineers were looking to solve the problem of users creating multiple albums of the same shared event. The new shared albums will eliminate double ups and instead create the one location for viewing. It is a great option to those who want to show photos from a recent family holiday, friends camping trip, wedding or any other fun-filled event.
For those concerned about visibility of these photos, the shared albums keep in line with Facebook privacy settings, inclusive of three privacy settings, public, contributors, and friends of contributors. This grants the albums creator control over who can and cannot view the photos.
So when can we start sharing?
Facebook will be rolling out this feature to English-speaking users soon, while those in other countries may have to wait a little bit longer. Currently the functionality is limited to desktops, but Facebook engineers said they would be working towards making improvements such as increasing the 200 photo limit and adding mobile support.
Tag: Facebook
Media Hashtags
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
If a thought is shared with the Internet and no one reads it, was there any point in sharing it?
These deep philosophical issues have been pondered for generations (actually, only the first one has,if we’re being honest here) but there are tools available to help ensure your thoughts are heard and read by as big an audience as possible.
A hashtag, which looks like this – #iamahashtag – is effectively a tool for adding your tweets or posts on social media into a global pool of information, easily accessible by anyone looking to find it.
Hashtags are now offered by most social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and Google+. You can invent hashtags to suit your brand’s social media campaigns or you can use established hashtags as you see fit.
Inventing your own hashtags will let you easily monitor the response to your brand’s social media campaigns; piggybacking off more popular hashtags will allow you to maximize your audience quickly. For example, say you have 300 people following your business’s Twitter account.If you send out a tweet and don’t include a hashtag, you’ve got a pretty small audience reading your thoughts. That usually means minimal interaction, minimal exposure and minimal chance of new people discovering your content and becoming familiar with your brand.
Adding a hashtag, for example #grandfinal or #summer, adds your Tweet or posts into a global pool, significantly broadening your reach. It potentially means hundreds of thousands of people who search that hashtagcould see it – depending on which hashtag you choose.
For brands looking to broaden their reach by using hashtags, there are pitfalls to consider first. For example, people may be cynical about brands that try to piggyback off popular hashtags that are irrelevant to their products or services.
There are also many cautionary tales of brands that have invited social media meltdown by encouraging people to use ill-consideredhashtags that simply invited criticism of their products or services. In one of the better-known cases, Qantas launched a social media campaign inviting people to share tales of luxury inflight experiences, tagged with #QantasLuxury. Unfortunately, they did so shortly after the airline had experienced significant mechanical problems with its fleet, leaving thousands of people stranded. The #QantasLuxuryhashtag was quickly overtaken with angry customers sharing their ironic ‘luxury’ travel experiences, including being stranded overnight.
Don’t let that put you off using them – hashtags are an invaluable way to quickly find your target market on social media and to significantly increase the reach of your messages.
The lesson is to put some thought about what hashtags you assign to your branded messages and to know your brand and audience first.