Just days after announcing its plans to launch new privacy controls, Facebook has now announced a relaxation on the dimensions of the photos being displayed on the service. According to an official blog post by FB Product Manager, Justin Shaffer, the default size of photographs displayed will be increased from the 720 pixels wide at present, to 960. Photos already posted to the profiles will also be resized and displayed at this resolution. However, we think that the low resolution images will look bad when blown up to this resolution. FB has further claimed that even though larger, these images will load twice as fast, but has not elaborated any further.

FB has made these changes in response to the feedback received from its users. It has also revamped its photo viewer with a cleaner and easier interface. A prominently visible change is that the light box is now set against a simple white background, thus emphasising more on the photo, and less on the background surrounding the frame. As with the security features, these features will be rolled out shortly.

Facebook buying up chunks of the social landscape

Facebook  to face competition with increased acquisitions

Facebook is the king of the hill when it comes to social networks, but it faces growing competition from a couple of old foes. Google is rampantly trying to play catch up in the social networking space, while Twitter seems to have a new-found motivation for improvement.


There is news out about Facebook's strategy (which interestingly enough is reminiscent of Google's overall strategy for the last decade: acquisitions, acquisitions, acquisitions.


Acquisitions

A new report out from Bloomberg says that Facebook is planning to make about 20 acquisitions this year, which would be twice as many as last year. This isn't a rumor. It's straight from Facebook's director of corporate development Vaughan Smith.

The company has already made 13 acquisitions this year, according to Bloomberg. These include: Mac app maker Sofa, mobile app creator Snaptu, group chat company Beluga, mobile ad company Rel8tion, and iPad app maker Push Pop Press. Such acquisitions are line with Facebook's plans to focus on design and mobile, as Smith indicated in the report.

Beyond Acquisitions

There is a lot more to maintaining a solid user experience and keeping people engaged than just piling on the acquisitions. It's what is done with the acquisitions, and what features are added (or kept or removed) that keep people around. It's also partnerships and the developer ecosystem that make things interesting, fun or worthwhile.

This week, Miramax announced a new Facebook app that could very well pave the way for the future of movie-based entertainment on the social network. Other movie studios have experimented with Facebook movie rental, but Miramax, working directly with Facebook itself has come up with a whole new concept for this, including plans for purchasing and digital storage.



Don't get left behind - contact Scream Media today for Facebook and Social Media Marketing Tel:021 559 0800