Facebook announced today that it is launching a feature where users can tag Pages in photos. That means users can now tag brands, businesses, musicians and personalities in their photo streams. Take a picture of your friend holding Pabst Blue Ribbon while dancing at the club? You can now tag your friend and the beer.
The tags will appear on the “photo” tag on the Facebook Page, not on the walls and can be tagged by anyone on Facebook, not just people who have liked that page. For the start of the feature, only Facebook Pages with the “brands & products” or “people” categories can be tagged in photos. Facebook will look to expand that to more page categories over time.
Facebook says, “the privacy of the photo is always respected when a Page is tagged in a photo.” If a photo is tagged for “everyone” then it can appear publicly on the photos tab of the page and page administrators can see it. If a photo is restricted, such as to one’s friends, then it will not go on the photos tab of the page. Page administrators can disable pictures from going to the photo tab by unchecking “users can add photos” in settings.
This seems like a smart play by Facebook as it tries to become a stronger destination for companies and brands online. Marketers could focus viral ad campaigns around photo tagging like “show us the weirdest place you ever drank a Pepsi and win a trip to Bonnaroo” or something of that nature.
Are you going to start tagging brands in your Facebook photos? Let us know in the comments.
