Facebook works some Photo Magic into Messenger
Facebook wants to make photo sharing easier in its popular Messenger app, especially this holiday season, when you’re likely to be taking lots of photos with your family at get-togethers and your friends at parties. And it aims to do that with a little bit of “magic.”
Photo Magic
Dubbed Photo Magic, Messenger’s new photo-sharing feature ensures that you remember to send a photo you’ve taken to those who are in the picture.
Here’s how Photo Magic works. You know when you’re tagging or sharing photos on Facebook and your Facebook friends are “automagically” recognized? Well, that same technology is used by Photo Magic to recognize who among your friends are in the photos you take, and then enables you to quickly and easily share those photos in a group thread with those friends.
Go to the Settings menu of Messenger to enable Photo Magic, or or tap Try It when prompted to try Photo Magic. (Not seeing Photo Magic yet? You may have to wait as the feature is still in its rollout phase.) Then, once you take a photo with your friends, you’ll be asked to send the photo to them. Tap Send to go ahead, or tap Cancel to opt out. Here’s how the reminder looks like:
You can turn off Photo Magic as well as set whether you want to be recognized in your friends’ photos or not by going to the timeline and tagging section of your Facebook settings.
Conversation customization
In addition to Photo Magic, Facebook has also begun rolling out new ways to customize conversations in Messenger.
Now, when you tap on the name of a contact or a group at the top of a conversation to enter the settings screen of that contact or group, you’ll see options for changing the nicknames, the color scheme, and the emoji associated with that conversation.
As suggested by Facebook, “change your family group thread to a festive red, update your mom’s formal first and last name to just ‘Mom,’ or change the emoji response in your holiday meet up group from the thumbs up to something more timely, like a party hat.”
Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad running iOS 7.0 or later, Facebook Messenger is available on the App Store for free.
Messenger was recently updated with 3D Touch integration for sending messages right from the home screen on iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus, support for sending message requests, and seasonally appropriate snowflake effects that appear when winter-related emoji and stickers are sent.
