Facebook Re-introduces Photo Tag Suggestions
Facebook has reintroduced photo Tag Suggestions in the U.S. having suspended the feature temporarily last year. It was suspended in order to make some technical improvements but has now been brought back.
The facial recognition feature was first distributed across the United States in 2010 and was pushed out to other countries in mid 2011.
It doesn’t look as if Facebook has made any changes to privacy settings with the feature, and that it is still a default setting. Facebook says that the feature has been brought back so that users can use facial recognition “to help them easily identify a friend in a photo and share that content with them.”
“This is the same feature that millions of people previously used to help them quickly share billions of photos with friends and family.”
The social network uses similar software to that found in many image editing tools in order to match new images to other photos that someone’s been tagged in. Photos that are similar to one another are put together and Facebook will suggest the name(s) of your friend(s) for the photo.
The square that finds a face in a photo will suggest the name of a Facebook friend that it believes it to be. The site hopes that this will simplify the process of tagging people, especially if the same friend appears in multiple uploaded photos.
Facebook announced the change in a Facebook and Privacy post but this could mean that many users will not have noticed it. The featured can be turned on or off by the users should they choose to do so.
To remove this feature from being default, select the tool icon in the top right corner of the page and then click on ‘Timeline and Tagging’ on the left hand side. At the bottom of the screen is an option that begins “Who sees tag suggestions . . .” which can be edited on the far right side.
For some, this may merely say ‘unavailable’ in which case the feature has not yet been distributed to you. Otherwise, a preference of either ‘Friends’ or ‘No One’ can be selected.
To get more information on Tag Suggestions and face recognition, go to the Facebook Help Centre.
Do you like Tag Suggestions? How useful is its inclusion?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below or via Twitter.
Daniel Barr
Follow us @SocialMediaF & @DanielAtSMF
www.socialmediafrontiers.com
Facebook Re-introduces Photo Tag Suggestions
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