- With over 250 million photos uploaded each day, sharing pictures is one of the most popular activities on Facebook. We are constantly working on making Facebook Photos better and today we're introducing some improvements to the way you experience photos.
Bigger Photos, Faster Loading
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. Photos you've already uploaded to your profile will also be displayed at this higher resolution.
Focus on the Photo
After we launched the first version of the photo viewer earlier this year, we received feedback from many of you and have made changes based on it. Today, we are rolling out a more streamlined photo viewer that features a cleaner interface that makes it even easier to enjoy your 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.
These new features will be gradually rolling out to everyone over the next few days.
- Today we're announcing a bunch of improvements that make it easier to share posts, photos, tags and other content with exactly the people you want. You have told us that "who can see this?" could be clearer across Facebook, so we have made changes to make this more visual and straightforward. The main change is moving most of your controls from a settings page to being inline, right next to the posts, photos and tags they affect. Plus there are several other updates here that will make it easier to understand who can see your stuff (or your friends') in any context. Here's what's coming up, organized around two areas: what shows up on your profile, and what happens when you share something new.
On Your Profile
Your profile should feel like your home on the web - you should never feel like stuff appears there that you don't want, and you should never wonder who sees what's there. The profile is getting some new tools that give you clearer, more consistent controls over how photos and posts get added to it, and who can see everything that lives there.
Inline Profile Controls
Before: Most of the settings for stuff on your profile were a few clicks away on a series of settings pages.
Going Forward: Content on your profile, from your hometown to your latest photo album, will appear next to an icon and a drop-down menu. This inline menu lets you know who can see this part of your profile, and you can change it with one click.
A side benefit of moving most settings to inline controls is a much shorter and simpler Settings page. A bunch of settings that were there previously have been moved directly inline, and a handful have been replaced or removed. (You can find more detail on the profile settings here: http://www.facebook.com/about/control)
You must log in to see this page.
Profile Tag Review
Before: Photos you were tagged in would show up on your profile as soon as you were tagged. One of the top requests we've heard is for the ability to approve these tags before they show up on your profile.
Going Forward: You can choose to use the new tool to approve or reject any photo or post you are tagged in before it's visible to anyone else on your profile.
Content Tag Review
Before: Anyone who could see your photos or posts could add tags to them.
Going Forward: You have the option to review and approve or reject any tag someone tries to add to your photos and posts.
View Profile As…
Before: We heard you wanted to know what your profile looked like to others, but the tool for doing this was behind the scenes.
Going Forward: This tool is now on the top of your profile where it's easier to access.
When You Share
In addition to the profile changes, it will now be more visually straightforward to understand and control who can see your posts at the time you share them. We're also broadening the functionality of the sharing tool: now if you want to make your posts more expressive, we've made it simple to add location and tag the people you're with.
Inline controls
Before: Controls for who could see your stuff on Facebook lived on a settings page a few clicks away.
Going Forward: The control for who can see each post will be right inline. For each audience, there is now an icon and label to help make it easier to understand and decide who you're sharing with. Also, when you tag someone, the audience label will automatically update to show that the person tagged and their friends can see the post.
This dropdown menu will be expanding over time to include smaller groups of people you may want to share with, like co-workers, Friend Lists you've created, and Groups you're a member of. These will make it easy to quickly select exactly the audience you want for any post.
If you're posting to Facebook from a phone or app that does not yet support inline controls, your setting will be the same as it is today. You can change this with a new setting available on your privacy settings page. (For a guided tour of these new controls, go here: http://www.facebook.com/about/sharing)
Word Change: "Everyone" to "Public"
Before: You had the option to share a post with Everyone, which meant that anyone on the internet might be able to see it.
Going Forward: We are changing the name of this label from Everyone to Public so that the control is more descriptive of the behavior: anyone may see it, but not everyone will see it. This is just to make the setting more clear, and it's just a language change.
Change Your Mind After You Post?
Before: Once you posted a status update, you couldn't change who could see it.
Going Forward: Now you'll be able to change who can see any post after the fact. If you accidentally posted something to the wrong group, or changed your mind, you can adjust it with the inline control at any time.
Tag Who You're With, or What You Want to Talk About
Before: You could only tag someone if you were friends with them, and you could only tag a Page if you had liked it. This felt broken or awkward if you had a photo album of co-workers and had to become Facebook friends to tag them in the photos.
Going Forward: You can add tags of your friends or anyone else on Facebook. If you are ever tagged by a non-friend, it won't appear on your profile unless you review and approve the post.
Tag Locations in Posts
Before: You could only "check in" to locations using the Places feature on a smart phone.
Going Forward: Now you can add location to anything. Lots of people use Facebook to talk about where they are, have been or want to go. Now you can add location from anywhere, regardless of what device you are using, or whether it is a status update, photo or Wall post. Of course, you can always choose not to add location at all.
As a part of this, we are phasing out the mobile-only Places feature. Settings associated with it are also being phased out or removed. (You can read more about how location works and settings affected here: http://www.facebook.com/about/location)
Remove Tags or Content from Facebook
Before: When we asked, people had different ideas of what removing a tag actually did, and different motivations for wanting to remove them.
Going Forward: Your options for removing tags or content on Facebook are presented more clearly. Your options are: removing from your profile, removing the tag itself, messaging the photo owner or tagger, and requesting the content get taken down. (More details on tagging can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/about/tagging)
These changes will start to roll out in the coming days. When they reach you, you'll see a prompt for a tour that walks you through these new features from your homepage. In the meantime, you can read more about the upcoming changes from the links throughout this post. We'll look forward to your feedback on all of this.
Taken together, we hope these new tools make it easier to share with exactly who you want, and that the resulting experience is a lot clearer and a lot more fun.
More and more of us rely on our phones to send and receive messages. But it isn't always easy to know the best way to reach someone on their phone. Should you send an email or text? Which will they check first? Did they even get your last message?
We think messaging should be easier than that. You should be able to write a message, click "Send" and know that you will reach the person right away.
So today, we're introducing Messenger, a new mobile app that simplifies how messaging works, and gives you a faster way to message friends and small groups.
A whole new app
Messenger is a separate app, so it only takes one click to get to your messages or send a new one. Messages are delivered through notifications and texts, so your friends are more likely to get them right away.
You can use Messenger to reach all of your friends -- whether they're on Facebook or in your phone contacts. All you have to do is type the person's name.
The Messenger app is an extension of Facebook messages, so all your conversations are in one place, including your texts, chats, emails and messages. Whether you're on your phone or on the web, you can see the full history of all your messages.
Make plans with groups
When you're on the go, coordinating a bunch of people can be tricky, especially if plans change at the last minute. With Messenger, you can quickly start a group conversation and message everyone at once.
If you choose to add your location, the people you're messaging with can easily find each other on the map. You can also attach photos, so everyone else can see and comment on what you're looking at.
How to get Messenger
Messenger will be available for both iPhone and Android starting today. Just search for "Facebook Messenger" in your phone's app store, or get a link to the app texted to your phone.
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We think messaging should be easier than that. You should be able to write a message, click "Send" and know that you will reach the person right away.
So today, we're introducing Messenger, a new mobile app that simplifies how messaging works, and gives you a faster way to message friends and small groups.
A whole new app
Messenger is a separate app, so it only takes one click to get to your messages or send a new one. Messages are delivered through notifications and texts, so your friends are more likely to get them right away.
You can use Messenger to reach all of your friends -- whether they're on Facebook or in your phone contacts. All you have to do is type the person's name.
The Messenger app is an extension of Facebook messages, so all your conversations are in one place, including your texts, chats, emails and messages. Whether you're on your phone or on the web, you can see the full history of all your messages.
Make plans with groups
When you're on the go, coordinating a bunch of people can be tricky, especially if plans change at the last minute. With Messenger, you can quickly start a group conversation and message everyone at once.
If you choose to add your location, the people you're messaging with can easily find each other on the map. You can also attach photos, so everyone else can see and comment on what you're looking at.
How to get Messenger
Messenger will be available for both iPhone and Android starting today. Just search for "Facebook Messenger" in your phone's app store, or get a link to the app texted to your phone.
It's always been easy to share with all your friends on Facebook, but until we introduced Groups last October, there wasn't a simple way to share with just a few people. Much of what we share in our daily lives is only meaningful to smaller groups of people, like our family, roommates, or co-workers. With Groups, you can create a private space to share with just those friends.
In the six months since our launch, people have created over 50 million Groups on Facebook. It's grown quickly because of its social design. Instead of making everyone build and manage individual friend lists, one person can create a group for their families and everyone in the family gets to use it.
We've received some great feedback about how people are using Groups and what new features they would like to see. Today, we're happy to announce some new improvements, including integration with Questions, the ability to upload photo albums, and additional membership controls.
How people are using Groups
People are using Groups to communicate with many of the important communities in their lives, like their families, best friends, and teammates. My own family uses a group to stay connected to each other. As a Californian with a brother living in Peru and parents back in Wisconsin, we use our group to update each other about our lives, share vacation photos, and discuss where we're going to meet up next.
I also have a group with my roommates. Because we have such different schedules, we can go a whole week without seeing each other in person. Our group is where we meet to divide up chores, settle our bills, and make plans for the weekend.
Popular group names among college students 19-22 years old (larger words represent greater popularity).
Popular group names among people 60-75 years old.
New improvements to Groups
You've always been able to post updates to Groups, but now you can post questions and polls for only members to weigh in on. You'll get quick responses to questions like "What movie should we see?" and "When should we should hold our next soccer practice?"
Where before you could only upload individual photos, now you have the option to upload entire albums directly to your group, making it even easier to share your photos with the people who most want to see them.
For group owners, we're also adding a control that lets you approve people before they are added to the group.
For people who were using our older version of Groups, we've created a tool that makes it easy to upgrade to the new Groups format. Owners and members of old Groups will be receiving information about how to upgrade within the coming weeks.
Send button lets you share with Groups
In addition to the other new group features, we're also introducing the Send button.
A year ago, we launched the Like button, which gives you a quick way to share the things you find on the web with all your friends. But there are times when you find something that you only want to share with a few specific people.
Say you're on Orbitz and want to tell your roommates about a great idea for a summer vacation, or you come across a Huffington Post article that you only want to share with people at work. With the new Send button, now you can share things with any of your Groups or individual friends on Facebook.
Starting today, the Send button will be available on over 50 leading websites, and it will appear in more places soon.
Create a Group today
It's been exciting to hear about the many ways people have been using Groups to communicate with the different people in their lives, and we hope you all enjoy the new features, which will be rolling out over the next few days.
Ready to start a new group? Visit www.facebook.com/groups.
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In the six months since our launch, people have created over 50 million Groups on Facebook. It's grown quickly because of its social design. Instead of making everyone build and manage individual friend lists, one person can create a group for their families and everyone in the family gets to use it.
We've received some great feedback about how people are using Groups and what new features they would like to see. Today, we're happy to announce some new improvements, including integration with Questions, the ability to upload photo albums, and additional membership controls.
How people are using Groups
People are using Groups to communicate with many of the important communities in their lives, like their families, best friends, and teammates. My own family uses a group to stay connected to each other. As a Californian with a brother living in Peru and parents back in Wisconsin, we use our group to update each other about our lives, share vacation photos, and discuss where we're going to meet up next.
I also have a group with my roommates. Because we have such different schedules, we can go a whole week without seeing each other in person. Our group is where we meet to divide up chores, settle our bills, and make plans for the weekend.
Popular group names among college students 19-22 years old (larger words represent greater popularity).Popular group names among people 60-75 years old.New improvements to Groups
You've always been able to post updates to Groups, but now you can post questions and polls for only members to weigh in on. You'll get quick responses to questions like "What movie should we see?" and "When should we should hold our next soccer practice?"
Where before you could only upload individual photos, now you have the option to upload entire albums directly to your group, making it even easier to share your photos with the people who most want to see them.
For group owners, we're also adding a control that lets you approve people before they are added to the group.
For people who were using our older version of Groups, we've created a tool that makes it easy to upgrade to the new Groups format. Owners and members of old Groups will be receiving information about how to upgrade within the coming weeks.
Send button lets you share with Groups
In addition to the other new group features, we're also introducing the Send button.
A year ago, we launched the Like button, which gives you a quick way to share the things you find on the web with all your friends. But there are times when you find something that you only want to share with a few specific people.
Say you're on Orbitz and want to tell your roommates about a great idea for a summer vacation, or you come across a Huffington Post article that you only want to share with people at work. With the new Send button, now you can share things with any of your Groups or individual friends on Facebook.
Starting today, the Send button will be available on over 50 leading websites, and it will appear in more places soon.
Create a Group today
It's been exciting to hear about the many ways people have been using Groups to communicate with the different people in their lives, and we hope you all enjoy the new features, which will be rolling out over the next few days.
Ready to start a new group? Visit www.facebook.com/groups.
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Safety has always been a social experience: as friends and family, we look out for each other and pass along advice to help each other stay safe. Safety on Facebook works the same way. By keeping each other informed, people make Facebook a more trusted environment. Today, we're making it easier to stay safe with the launch of new safety resources, tools for reporting issues and additional security features.
During President Obama's White House Conference on Bullying Prevention last month, we announced plans to expand our existing safety resources with new content for families. Beginning today, you can visit the newly redesigned Family Safety Center. There, you'll find useful articles for parents and teens and videos on safety and privacy, as well as many other resources. In the coming weeks, we'll also be providing a free, downloadable guide for teachers, written by safety experts Linda Fogg Phillips, B.J. Fogg and Derek Baird. We hope this guide will help educators with social media in the classroom.
We also recently unveiled a new social reporting tool that allows people to notify a member of their community, in addition to Facebook, when they see something they don't like. Safety and child psychology experts tell us that online issues are frequently a reflection of what is happening offline. By encouraging people to seek help from friends, we hope that many of these situations can be resolved face to face. The impact has been encouraging, and we're now expanding social reporting to other major sections of Facebook, including Profiles, Pages and Groups.
We're also starting to introduce Two Factor Authentication, a new feature to help prevent unauthorized access to your account. If you turn this new feature on, we'll ask you to enter a code anytime you try to log into Facebook from a new device. This additional security helps confirm that it's really you trying to log in.
We announced earlier this year that people could experience Facebook over a secure connection using HTTPS. This feature helps protect your personal information and is particularly useful if you're uncertain about the security of your network or you're using public wifi to access Facebook. Today, we're improving HTTPS so if you start using a non-HTTPS application on Facebook, we automatically switch your session back to HTTPS when you're finished.
We think that social solutions to safety will become increasingly important to using the web. Tools like social reporting will help make our community even stronger, and we encourage you to use them.
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More Resources for Families
During President Obama's White House Conference on Bullying Prevention last month, we announced plans to expand our existing safety resources with new content for families. Beginning today, you can visit the newly redesigned Family Safety Center. There, you'll find useful articles for parents and teens and videos on safety and privacy, as well as many other resources. In the coming weeks, we'll also be providing a free, downloadable guide for teachers, written by safety experts Linda Fogg Phillips, B.J. Fogg and Derek Baird. We hope this guide will help educators with social media in the classroom.
Social Reporting Tools
We also recently unveiled a new social reporting tool that allows people to notify a member of their community, in addition to Facebook, when they see something they don't like. Safety and child psychology experts tell us that online issues are frequently a reflection of what is happening offline. By encouraging people to seek help from friends, we hope that many of these situations can be resolved face to face. The impact has been encouraging, and we're now expanding social reporting to other major sections of Facebook, including Profiles, Pages and Groups.
Advanced Security Features
We're also starting to introduce Two Factor Authentication, a new feature to help prevent unauthorized access to your account. If you turn this new feature on, we'll ask you to enter a code anytime you try to log into Facebook from a new device. This additional security helps confirm that it's really you trying to log in.
We announced earlier this year that people could experience Facebook over a secure connection using HTTPS. This feature helps protect your personal information and is particularly useful if you're uncertain about the security of your network or you're using public wifi to access Facebook. Today, we're improving HTTPS so if you start using a non-HTTPS application on Facebook, we automatically switch your session back to HTTPS when you're finished.
We think that social solutions to safety will become increasingly important to using the web. Tools like social reporting will help make our community even stronger, and we encourage you to use them.
Friends are often the best source of advice when you're trying new things: Where should I go to dinner? How do I go buy a car? What new music should I check out? Friends know your tastes, and you have confidence in their opinions.
Like many of our products, Questions originated as people began using Facebook in a new and unexpected way. People would update their status with a question, and their friends would answer in the comments. We saw this and began thinking about how we could make this interaction more useful. Over the summer, we began testing Questions with a small group of people, and today we are beginning to roll it out to everyone.
We noticed that people were frequently asking for opinions ("what are your favorite restaurants in New York?") or hoping to learn about their friends ("what was your favorite movie as a kid, something you watched over and over?"). For most of these questions, experts weren't going to be the best source for advice. The answers to these questions are meaningful or interesting because you know your friends and your friends know you.
We wanted to make questions easier and faster to answer. With the updated Questions you can agree with an existing answer with a single click, or you can add a different response. This makes it easy for many more people to respond to you. It also helps us show you the most popular responses.
Quickly get answers to your questions.
Questions will also enable you to cast a wider net. Now, when your friends answer one of your questions, their friends can answer it too. For more unusual questions, you can get advice from a broader group of people, but to keep it most relevant we filter the answers to show you first what your friends think. You can see more responses by clicking "others" within the question.
Questions will be available to everyone soon, but you can try it now here and learn more.
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Like many of our products, Questions originated as people began using Facebook in a new and unexpected way. People would update their status with a question, and their friends would answer in the comments. We saw this and began thinking about how we could make this interaction more useful. Over the summer, we began testing Questions with a small group of people, and today we are beginning to roll it out to everyone.
We noticed that people were frequently asking for opinions ("what are your favorite restaurants in New York?") or hoping to learn about their friends ("what was your favorite movie as a kid, something you watched over and over?"). For most of these questions, experts weren't going to be the best source for advice. The answers to these questions are meaningful or interesting because you know your friends and your friends know you.
We wanted to make questions easier and faster to answer. With the updated Questions you can agree with an existing answer with a single click, or you can add a different response. This makes it easy for many more people to respond to you. It also helps us show you the most popular responses.
Quickly get answers to your questions.Questions will also enable you to cast a wider net. Now, when your friends answer one of your questions, their friends can answer it too. For more unusual questions, you can get advice from a broader group of people, but to keep it most relevant we filter the answers to show you first what your friends think. You can see more responses by clicking "others" within the question.
Questions will be available to everyone soon, but you can try it now here and learn more.
