Facebook today announced some notable upgrades to its photo-sharing product: the ability to share high-resolution photos, "tag" people in bulk, and browse photos in a more streamlined fashion that doesn't load individual pages each time a new photo is viewed. The announcement was made by Facebook Photos product manager Sam Odio, and the new features will be rolling out over the next month, starting with a small test group on Thursday night.

Previously, much of Facebook Photos had been "a clumsy experience," Odio explained, with image sizes limited to a relatively small 720-pixel resolution, tagging other members only possible through a slow process, and the photo upload tool "several years old--it was just using this old Java technology."

With millions of photos uploaded to the social network every day, Facebook didn't think its existing product was sufficient. "Reliability is extremely important to us," he said. "The biggest problem in other countries, where you're talking about slower computers and slower Internet connections: they were really struggling to upload photos to Facebook."

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