Connecting the Dots / An Agency Blog

Realizing that many of the photos uploaded to Facebook’s servers contain recognizable places and products, the ever evolving social platform now allows its users to tag places and products in the photos they’re browsing.

It’s a rather simple tweek of the existing photo tagging platform, really, but one that opens up a wider connection to the the social graph for brands and other entities that use Pages as a way to interact with fans on Facebook.

So, say I’m at work at home watching TV, browsing last night’s party pics at the Waldorf Hotel, when I come across a quant photo of two of my friends out in front of the marquee sign on Hastings Street here in Vancouver. Effortlessly, I tag said photo, but not with my friends, with The Waldorf Hotel. Well that’s not going to happen, because the Waldorf has photo tagging shut off — already!? (at the time this was written this new feature was only 24hours old).

Forget the Waldorf then. Let’s say you come across that photo, you know, the one you like of yourself in front of the ACE Hotel in NYC, and you’d like to add it to the ACE’s Facebook Page photos to let everyone see it. Well, that’s not going to happen either, because the ACE Hotel has already shut down user tagging as well. What’s going on here?

Let’s try again. Say you go through every picture you have, just trying to exemplify a new feature on Facebook! And finally come across a rather boring photo of a picture you accidentally took in Los Angeles in someones backyard of a half drunk bottle of Miller High Life beer. Who cares who sees it at this point! You tag it out of desperation, and finally, it works. Thank-you to the Miller High Life Facebook Page for allowing exhausted bloggers to tag photos to their user submitted photo gallery. Here’s the award winning photo.

Some points:

• To show up as a taggable entity the product or place in question has to have a Facebook Page
• The tagged photo is delegated to the photo area of the Page used to retain user generated content
• The tagged photo will not show up on the Page’s wall

Conclusion. An interesting twist to photo tagging that could open up some interesting possibilities for Pages, but Facebook is only as good as its members privacy settings. Carry on.

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