Facebook announced shared photo albums on Monday, a new feature allowing multiple users to upload images to the same album.
The album creator can share access to as many as 50 contributors who each can share up to 200 photos. Album creators can choose a setting that allows contributors to invite others in the album, or retain control over its invitations.
The new shared albums have three privacy settings: public, friends of contributors and contributors only. Bob Baldwin, software engineer at Facebook says:
"Right now, if you were at a party and there were three different albums created, you might not be able to see all the photos [based on privacy settings], which is kind of confusing and frustrating," Baldwin said. Album creators will have the power to delete or modify photos in the album, but contributors will have editing power over photos that they upload. The feature is not available for Page albums, says a Facebook spokesperson.
"I think one thing that's really fun about creating products at Facebook is that you're never quite sure how people will use the product one thing that's really fun about creating products at Facebook is that you're never quite sure how people will use the product in the end," Baldwin said. "We're really excited for launch because we think people will use [shared albums] in ways that we're not even thinking of."
Facebook will begin to roll out this new feature to a small group of English users on Monday and then integrate it for all English users before expanding internationally, according to Baldwin.