Just got married? Gone to a reunion? Attended a special event, and want to see all of the wonderful photos that were captured? You no longer need to visit the Facebook pages of each attendee to view the pictures they took. Instead, simply create a shared photo album on Facebook.
On Monday, Facebook announced the new feature, which lets up to 50 users contribute pictures to the same album (this does not apply to albums for Pages).
How do you set up a shared album? It’s actually quite simple, and only requires a few extra steps.
After you log in to Facebook, click on the “Photos” tab to the far left of the News Feed or at the top of your profile page. You will be taken to your stream of photos, where you will see a “Create Album” tab in the top right-hand corner; click that.
Select the photos that you want to upload from your computer (you can always come back, and upload additional pictures later). As with any other photo album, you’ll be prompted to fill out information about the album you’re creating. Feel free to include as little or as much about the album as you want. In order to use the shared albums feature, you need to click the “Post Photos” button in the lower right-hand corner.
(instructions from mashable.com)
At the top of the next screen, you will have the option to make the album a shared album by clicking on the button in the upper left-hand corner. You will then be able to search for, and add up to 50 of your Facebook friends as “contributors” to the album. This is also where you’ll want to take a moment to explore the album’s privacy settings.
A shared album has three settings: public, friends of contributors and contributors only. You can also decide whether you want to allow contributors to invite others to the album. Deselecting the blue check box below the list of contributors will ensure that the album creator is the only user who is able to invite others to post photos in the album.
If you ever need to go back and make changes to a shared album, you can do that, too. Just open the album, and click on the “Edit” button in the upper right-hand corner. You will then be able to remove or add contributors, change the album title or description, and alter privacy settings.
Facebook’s newest feature is currently limited to select users. The company began rolling out shared photo albums to a small group on Monday, and will expand to all English members before opening the feature to international members.
