14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook’s photos feature has been a major driver of traffic and one of the most popular sections of the site. The social nature of Facebook makes it a great place to share family or vacation photos with your friends and family. Already, users spend a lot of time browsing through the photo albums, but Facebook is testing a new feature that should make people sink in even more time. With ‘Related Photos,’ the built-in Facebook photo application displays a few thumbnailed photos to the right, which may be of interest to the viewer but that are not from the same album.
These Related Photos show up to the right of the regular photo viewer and are either from other albums belonging to the user you are currently viewing photos from or from your friends, who may be tagged in the photo set. These photos are sometimes accompanied by comments from your friends to show why they may be interesting or related to you.
“This is a feature we’re currently testing with a small percentage of users,” a Facebook spokesperson told Mashable, confirming the test. It remains to be seen if the feature will be rolled out to everyone and what tweaks and changes it may get before that happens.
Facebook has been revamping the photo section lately, though not without its critics, as it is usual for any change at the social network. It launched a new photo uploader a few months back, designed for those uploading a bunch of photos at a time. Unfortunately, it requires users to install a purpose-built browser plugin, so there have been a few critics. The photos themselves have gotten bigger in a recent update going from 604 pixels wide to 720. That may not seem like a big change, but, for a site handling tens of billions of photos, it’s a radical move.