Facebook unveils shared photo albums

Ever wish you and your friends could all access and contribute to one group of photos on Facebook? Well then today is Christmas for you (unless you hate Christmas).

Facebook unveiled shared photo albums on Monday, a new functionality that allows you and up to 49 other people to add and share photos in a single group. Each person can upload 200 photos if they like.

Mashable first broke the story.

Previously, only one person could edit their own group of photos and were limited to 1,000 images (because people really want to see what you had for dinner every night for the last couple of years).

The new feature has three privacy settings that are set up by the album’s creator: public, friends of contributors and contributors only. So there is a chance that only a handful of people will see that photo of you at the party face down on the floor with half a beer in your hand. But, we all know it will find it’s way into your boss’s news feed at some point anyway.

“I think one thing that’s really fun about creating products at Facebook is that you’re never quite sure how people will use the product in the end,” Facebook engineer Bob Baldwin said. “We’re really excited for launch because we think people will use [shared albums] in ways that we’re not even thinking of.”

I’m reserving judgement until I see this new feature in action. Could be very useful or very annoying. Maybe both.