Facebook Amps Up Photo Sharing

Pictures like this might be more easily tagged on Facebook with a new feature to be released soon. Photo credit / Kathleen Kraemer Pictures like this might be more easily tagged on Facebook with a new feature to be released soon. Photo credit / Kathleen Kraemer
Pictures like this might be more easily tagged on Facebook with a new feature to be released soon. Photo credit / Kathleen Kraemer
Pictures like this might be more easily tagged on Facebook with a new feature to be released soon.
Photo credit / Kathleen Kraemer

By Jessica Semon
Contributing Writer

With the holidays quickly approaching, there is no doubt that Facebook accounts will be receiving an influx of pictures.

The company’s idea of scanning the faces of photos once they are posted is now in the preliminary stages of advancing.

Facebook aims to have facial recognition in photos while on an individual’s camera roll, before they are even posted.

“It makes it easier to tag your friends a lot quicker instead of manually typing in names and tagging them that way,” East Stroudsburg University student, Larry Sollars stated.

The company’s new “Photo Magic” feature aims to perform facial recognition on photos, outside of the Facebook application.

“It’s still way too difficult to share photos with friends, and receive all the ones you’re in,” Facebook App Manager David Marcus stated in a recent interview with CNN.

As a result, the new feature, which can be turned on and off, will scan photos while still on the camera roll application, and perform a facial recognition to an individual’s friends on their Facebook.

The goal of the program is to make sharing easier. Suggesting people to share your photos with simply by recognizing them prior to uploading them on Facebook could save a good deal of time.
By the premeditated sharing with individuals, Facebook aims to save users some time when it comes to sharing their photos.

Some ESU students have other opinions on this new feature.

“I’m not entirely convinced it’s necessary to compromise a core element of the OS,” said The Stroud Courier Managing Editor Bill Cameron. “It seems like a neat concept for a sharing feature, but it’s a little too gimmicky to justify a potential privacy breech. Facebook seems to exaggerate the difficulty of one additional tap just to share a photo.”

It looks like we’ll have to wait until the holiday season to see how this new feature pans out.

Email Jess at:
jms9522@live.esu.edu