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Which requirements does FaceBook meet?
| Id | Pri | Requirement | Pass? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GEN1 | C | Accessible by a typical web-browser | Y | |
| GEN2 | I | Active development of new features | Y | |
| OWN1 | C | Ownership of photos is retained by me. | N | |
| OWN2 | C | Future-proofed against money running out: mine or yours | N | |
| OWN3 | I | Ownership of meta-data is retained by me. | N | |
| CAT1 | C | Photographs grouped into albums by event | Y | |
| CAT2 | C | Photographs tagged with people | Y | |
| CAT3 | I | Photographs tagged with locations, objects, activities | N | Could be, by convention. |
| CAT4 | I | Performers tagged with real and stage names. | N | Could be, by convention. |
| CAT5 | I | Attribution of photographer details | N | |
| CAT6 | I | Attribution of copyright owner’s details | N | |
| CAT7 | I | Rating of photographs | N | |
| CAT8 | I | Sorting/Filtering by rating | N | |
| CAT9 | D | Albums grouped by type | N | |
| CAT10 | D | Albums grouped by date | N | |
| CAT11 | D | Areas or points of photograph tagged | Y | |
| CAT12 | D | Simple contact management of subjects | Y | |
| CAT13 | D | Hidden fields on contacts to distinguish like-named people | N | |
| CAT14 | D | Tagging of anonymous people to enable searching | N | Could be, within album, by convention |
| CAT15 | D | Corrections to names update everywhere | N | |
| CAT16 | D | Attribution of copyright details | N | |
| CAT17 | D | Control over (default) ordering | N | Inverse to order uploaded (so upload your bad photos first!) |
| S+L1 | C | Link to other photos with same tag within an album | Y | |
| S+L2 | I | Associate URLs with subjects, that are displayed. | Y | Limited to Facebook Profile of FaceBook friends. |
| S+L3 | I | Link to other photos with same tag across my albums | Y | Limited to Facebook Profile of FaceBook friends. |
| S+L4 | I | Search of tags by keyword | N | |
| S+L5 | I | Cross-promotion of other albums and sites. | Y | Could put in description, which no-one sees. |
| S+L6 | D | Link to other photos with same tag across other photo sites | N | |
| S+L7 | D | Search of album names by keyword | N | |
| S+L8 | D | User-generatable URLs to search tags by keyword | N | |
| COMM1 | D | Multi-user Tagging | Y | |
| COMM2 | D | Notifications of appearance in photos | Y | |
| COMM3 | D | Comments permitted | Y | |
| COMM4 | D | Notification of comments | Y | Arcane rules apply. |
| COMM5 | D | RSS or Atom Feeds for comments | N | |
| COMM6 | D | RSS or Atom Feeds for subjects | N | |
| COMM7 | D | RSS or Atom Feeds for new photos | N | Arcane rules apply to notification of FaceBook friends. |
| PQ1 | C | Web-quality images shall be displayed by default. | Y | |
| PQ2 | I | Print-quality images shall be available. | N | |
| PQ3 | I | Automatically generated thumbnail and web-quality versions. | Y | |
| PQ4 | D | Archive-quality images shall be stored. | N | |
| PQ5 | D | Custom thumbnails (e.g. choosing to crop over shrinking.) | N | |
| PQ6 | D | Support for short video | Y | |
| PQ7 | D | Support for long video | N | |
| PERF1 | I | Quota > 0.5 TB, if any | Y | |
| PERF2 | I | Low-cost | Y | |
| PERF3 | I | Fast response time | Y | |
| PERF4 | I | Scale to thousands of tags | N | Only scales to FaceBook friends; other tags are album-specific. |
| PERF5 | I | < 1 minute face-time per photograph | N | If you aren’t FaceBook friends of the people in the photo, you need to revisit the photo again and again to approve each tag as others add it. |
| PERF6 | D | Free | Y | |
| UI1 | C | Forward/Backward navigation between photos in album. | Y | |
| UI2 | D | Slideshows | N | I haven’t defined this well enough. Clicking is required between shots. |
| UI3 | D | Display of many thumbnails at once | N | Borderline; about 25 thumbnails. |
| PRIV1 | C | Their email address should never be published on the web. | Y | |
| PRIV2 | I | Registration and logging in not required for general use. | N | Borderline; unregistered users can view photos but not meta-data. |
| PRIV3 | I | Robust privacy features for photographs | Y | Somewhat arcane; difficult to understand. |
| WF1 | I | Hint to original location on my harddrive | N | |
| WF2 | I | Auto-complete or partial search on tags during input | Y | Works very well with FaceBook friends, poorly for other tags. |
| WF3 | D | Read EXIF data from image | N | |
| WF4 | D | Support unpublished draft state | N | |
| MIGR1 | C | API to add photos | Y | |
| MIGR2 | C | API to add tags | Y | |
| MIGR3 | I | Tags can be non-specific to areas of photo | N | |
| METR1 | D | “How many visitors?” metric | N | |
| METR2 | D | “How long does a visitor stay?†metric | N |
Summary
I am actually a fan of what FaceBook have done; the social networking aspects of an album are brought to the fore. People are told when they are tagged in pictures. Friends of the person also learn about it. Nice photos become profile pictures. Comments are common.
However, there is a lock-in to the FaceBook platform which is unacceptable given that there are many die-hard FaceBook-haters. Also, the low-quality of the images, lack of attribution and the impact on the workflow of the intrusive rules about tagging non-friends emphasizes that these are social snaps, not a photographer’s proud creations.
Comment by James on June 14, 2008
“Lock-in”
Agreed, there is a lot of lock-in, but just in case people aren’t aware, you can share your facebook photos with people not on facebook by sending them a link that is attached to the album. Then anyone has access.
“many die-hard FaceBook-haters”
You know, maybe its the rise of yet another blog post, but has the rise of the fan-boy led to the rise of yet ANOTHER screwed up beast called the anti-fanboy? I.e. the people who really hate something because its popular? Like people who hate windows or hate facebook or hate the iphone, but when probed, give fairly crappy answers (just like fanboys).
Comment by Julian on June 14, 2008
James,
I am one ahead of you.
Your point about external access is already touched upon in the note on PRIV2.
Your comment about needing another blog post about hating Facebook for bad reasons already is another blog post!
Comment by Sunny Kalsi on June 14, 2008
James: Is it possible to give non-facebook users access to the album, but disallow access to the wider internet (by, for example, password protecting the link)?
Comment by Julian on December 5, 2008
Sunny, no, I don’t believe that is possible. (And sorry my answer took 5 months!)