14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook has been the most popular photo sharing service in the world for a few years now without even trying. Now that it is trying, few will have a chance of competing.
Facebook has been working on a feature which would enable users to have all of their photos automatically uploaded to the site.
It's been testing the feature since August, but it is only now making it available widely.
Users can have all of the photos they take with their phones uploaded to Facebook to a private folder, if they choose to.
"We’re excited to roll out photo sync, which makes it easier to share photos. With this feature, photos from your phone sync automatically to a private album on the web," Facebook announced.
You have to turn on the feature, it's not enabled by default, so your pics won't end up on Facebook without you realizing it.
If you do enable it, photos will be uploaded as soon as you take them, depending on several factors such as whether it's set to WiFi-only, your battery level and so on.
Your photos end up in a private album, in Photos > Synced from Phone. Only you will be able to see them, but you can share the ones you want with others.
Facebook is hardly the first to roll out a feature, Dropbox has been focusing on automatic photo uploads for the past year or so. Its desktop and mobile apps can now integrate with the operating system and sync all of your photos to the cloud.
Google+ got a similar feature several months ago, Instant Upload makes it possible to sync a photo to Google+ Photos as soon as you take it.
If anything, Facebook is late to the party. That said, Facebook Photos is so big it can be as late as it wants. There are more photos on Facebook than on plenty of other services combined.
With the new photo sync feature, you can expect the rate of growth to accelerate with Facebook further distancing itself from its competitors.