Facebook takes on Flickr: revamps photo feature

Facebook has announced a major update to its photo product that will give Flickr a run for its money.

As one of the largest photo-sharing sites in the world, Facebook has acknowledged the need to beef up its photo capabilities. The update will include hi-res photos, bulk tagging capabilites and a lightbox interface for viewing images from anywhere on the site.

Facebook began rolling out these new features yesterday, brining the ability to upload and download hi-res photos up to 2048 pixels wide or high.  All the photos can be downloaded as a JPEG and at 2048 pixels are considered print-quality.

In addition, Facebook will be making the way users view photos more visually appealing with their new Lightbox. Finally, Facebook will offer group tagging and promises a better upload experience in general — having rebuilt their photo uploader.

With over 500 million users, Facebook’s beefed up photo editor is going to give sites like Flickr and SmugMug tough competition. What used to be a site for capturing memories and events, Facebook is trying to reposition itself as a player in the online photo sharing community.

Facebook launches live video channel

Facebook which is already widely used as a platform for distributing live video, is making a play of its own with a new app called Facebook Live.

However, unlike services like Ustream and Livestream that offer live video features for Facebook Pages, Facebook Live is more of a channel dedicated to the happenings of the social networking company as opposed to a platform for others.

In a statement, the company says they'll be using Facebook Live "to be your window into what's new at Facebook," including celebrity guests that stop by the company's HQ, demos of new features from employees, and special events taking place (conceivably, things like the f8 conference).

The app itself looks a lot like other live video platforms, with integrated chat that broadcasts out to the news feed. It's also embeddable, and the company will be testing it out when actress America Ferrera stops by at 6pm ET this evening.

It will be interesting to see how Facebook goes about promoting the feature. Might we see notifications in the News Feed when a big guest stops by the company's HQ? That would give the site an opportunity to aggregate some huge audiences around live video, though it remains to be seen if that's in the cards or if this is more of a PR move to make the company feel more personable.

Either way, it's a nice boon for Livestream, which has been chosen as the official live video partner for the project.

  

PC World: Microsoft Puts Facebook into Your Outlook

Microsoft Puts Facebook into Your Outlook

Slacking off at work just got a little easier with Facebook integration for Microsoft Outlook.

Image courtesy of MashableUsers of Microsoft's e-mail program can now look at their contacts' Facebook status updates, photos and wall posts in real time, and Outlook also pulls profile pictures to associate with each Facebook-connected contact.


As the world's most visited site, Facebook is the crown jewel of Microsoft Outlook Social Connector, a plug-in that blends social networking with e-mail. Microsoft debuted the plug-in with LinkedIn contacts in February, and added MySpace to the mix in March.


For now, Facebook is a one-way street on Outlook. You can read status updates and look at photos, but you can't "Like" anything or post updates of your own. Microsoft told Mashable that it plans to let users push data to social networks in the future, but didn't mention Facebook specifically.


Outlook isn't the first mainstream e-mail service to get social networking integration. Yahoo Mail began pulling in Facebook status updates in March, and Hotmail joined the trend with Facebook and MySpace support in May. Google's Gmail charted its own path by integrating Google Buzz. I think it's a natural progression for communications; the same blending of social networking, e-mail and text messaging is happening on smartphones.


Outlook is a bit different because of its popularity in the office. Roughly half of all U.S. companies ban Facebook and Twitter at work, according to a recent study by IT staffing firm Robert Half Technology. For those employers, the idea of a Facebook-connected Outlook might not go over so well.


But Mashable paints a scenario in which social networking integration could provide an advantage: If you're connected on Facebook with clients, you can better relate to them by keeping up on their activities and interests -- provided you can pull it off without acting creepy.