The spread of cameras and smartphones with high quality cameras is allowing social media to become more picture oriented. The better hardware inspired and allowed Pinterest, which has placed pressure on other social networks to become more graphically oriented. FaceBook’s attempts to comply were announced on Thursday.
The immediate change is that FaceBook will now display photos in high definition. These new formats require much more bandwidth and will mean lower load times, but FaceBook made the decision that need to make that sacrifice to keep up with changing preferences.
FaceBook will also allow the photos to be enlarged to full screen size. This seems to be the less costly of the changes, as the ballooning function is optional and requires direction by the user to do so.
One thing FaceBook has done to minimize the cost in load times (cost on bandwidth and user frustration levels) is to change the engineering of photos on the service. Some portions of the color spectrum were removed. These colors are deemed unnecessary for photo resolution and it saves on the data needed to push a photo to a browser.
Besides an improvement in FaceBook’s service this update can be tapped into by the social media agency. The increased image capacity means brands can be better represented. Their advertising photos should be prettier and more colorful. The social media agency needs to evaluate the image strategy of its clients and make sure that is using the full abilities available.