Facebook Shared Photo Albums

Facebook announced a new photo-sharing feature that will help you be more collaborative.  While it’s not available to all users yet, Facebook will be rolling out shared albums soon.

In its most basic form, shared albums will let you assign multiple people who can contribute to a single album.  As the owner of an album, you can choose contributors who can add photos, tag people and add other contributors.  They can only delete the photos they upload, but as the owner of the album, you still have control over all the images.

Facebook says when the feature is available you can go to a new or existing album and select “make shared album” in the upper left corner.  Then you can select contributors.

You might already be thinking about how a shared album could be useful in your church.  It lets more staff, volunteers and members get involved.  Plus it archives pictures all in one spot instead of being scattered all around the place.

If you think you’ll use shared albums, here are a few things to consider:

• Set the expectation of what should be posted.  When you ask someone to be a contributor, let him or her know what you’re wanting.  What specific content do you want in the photos?  How many pictures are too many to post? Do you want them to tag certain people?  How soon should they be posted during or after an event?  Is the album an ongoing collection?  Whatever your goals are for an album, keep your contributors in the loop.
• What makes a good photo?  Similarly to what should be posted, it’s good to define what is a quality picture.  Photos that are blurry, dark or the backs of people’s heads aren’t compelling.  Pictures of people in action or with emotion on their face are better.  Composition is important, too.
• Inform people about your photo usage policies.  Most likely your church has a policy for sharing photos online.  Make sure your contributors are familiar with those policies.

What do you think?  Is the shared albums feature something you think you’ll use?