Organise Facebook Albums On The Go

21st Century Scrapbooking

Yesterday, Facebook rolled out a minor update to its iPhone and Android apps that will allow its users to reposition the order of photographs in their uploaded albums. When uploading multiple photos to a new album, you can now simply tap and drag your photos into whatever order you deem fit. When you hit upload, they'll remain in that order, and anyone who checks out the album full of your scantily clad holiday snaps will see them in the order of your choice. 

The feature has been available on PC for years, but it was impossible to prioritise the order of your snaps when on the go until yesterday. The update comes as no surprise due to Facebook's tweaks over the last few months regarding how we view albums on phones. Instead of the endless tiles we have become accustomed to over the years, Facebook have recently zoomed us all in a bit. This means we view fewer photos at once, making their order more of a priority. 

Making use of the feature is simple. Once you've uploaded a group of photos, select up to 30 at once and position them how you see fit. When photos are selected, you can also edit their tags, captions, locations and descriptions en masse. Of course, you can still edit these individually from this view.

Although I can't say this is a feature I'll be getting too giddy about, it does have some pretty obvious real-world advantages. If you're uploading an album of a wedding, for example, it makes sense that you'd want the 'action shots' to be boosted to the top of the pile. People won't click on your album to see a bunch of bridesmaids and groomsmen they've never heard of posing outside a church; they'll want to see the happy couple walking down the aisle. Now, we can put this image right at the top, followed by the cutting of the cake, the first dance, the lonely bride of honour, etc.

In an interview with Mashable, Facebook's product manager for photos said that the update is a culmination of a year's work to make Facebook's photo uploads tell more of a story than the sum of their parts. According to Yao, "it's not just about the the weddings and big trips. It's about the silly daily moments, too."

In other words, Facebook want to turn our scrapbooks into flipbooks. This is all getting pretty confusing.

Interestingly, Facebook are beginning to radically shift the focus of their image uploadery into something that more closely resembles Snapchat's stories. Ever-unique, they've given the series of photos uploaded and reordered through their new album update an interesting new name: stories. These will then be strangely absent from the 'Albums' tab in your profile, and will instead only appear under 'Your Photos.'

According to Yao, Facebook has plenty of reasons for this shift in direction. "I think Facebook is in some ways a proxy for your dinner tables. It used to be you pulled out your wallet and showed people your latest photos of your kids or your dog. Now you can do this in the moment."

Emile Cole

Emile is a postgrad from the University of Saint Mark and Saint John. He’s hoping to break into journalism or publishing, and won’t stop blogging until he’s managed it! Follow him @EmileAtSMF.

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