Facebook updates... to Photos

News coming from the universe of Facebook with regard to photos. In this case, I think these features are pretty cool, but they could leave you searching for some photo options that you were previously used to seeing right away.

There is one major surprise, along with some cool features, coming to Facebook Photos.

First, the surprise...

• Facebook will no longer present albums first but rather tagged pictures of you or the friend whose profile you're looking at.

If you are a world-class organizer, carefully and faithfully filing your photos into Albums, those are still present, but Facebook is going to surface photos of you or of your friend first. Not to worry, the Albums feature is still a click away.

When you land at the Photos page, you will start with Photos of You and see something like this masthead near the top of your Photos page. If you need to look at all of your photos, just click Photos. And to see your super-organized Albums, just click Albums to see your traditional Album view.

And now the new cool features....

• The new Photos section will let users highlight their favorite pictures, making them four times larger than other photos. 

To highlight a photo, just click the Highlight (star) icon in the corner of the photo. Facebook will grow the photo right before your eyes with a slick animation that shuffles your photos slightly, but remarkably leaves them in the same order.

In the example here, the Highlight (star) icon will appear once you hover over the photo. 

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Once you click that Highlight (star) icon, the photo grows to 4 times its original size and shuffles other photos to make way for your now prized masterpiece. Show off those great photos and moments of your life by Highlighting those photos.

And that's not all...

• You can now issue Likes and Comments right from the Photos page. Again, hovering is the key. Just hover over the photo and you will automatically spot the Like and Comment buttons come into view. Your Likes and Comments will register right from these views without need to detour into a different Facebook page first. Nice to make some quick comments without surfing all over Facebook.

So some pretty cool stuff. And you are in the driver's seat of knowing what happened and how to navigate it. You're so smart!