New Facebook Photo Viewer Mimics Google+ Counterpart

Facebook tweaked its photo viewer interface, making it look a lot like its counterpart on Google+. The new widescreen photo viewer is now live for most Facebook users, who don’t have scroll down anymore to see the comments for a certain photo.

When you click on any photo on Facebook, it will now fill your screen and the background becomes a light grey. The photo information and comments are displayed on the right, eliminating the need to scroll down to see comments. When you hover over a photo, two large buttons to like and tag a picture are also available. Ads appear in the lower right corner as well on certain photos.

The new Facebook photo viewer is an improvement over its previous iteration. Photos are now larger, comments are easier to scan and the box around pictures drags you in. But as a user of both Facebook and Google+, I couldn’t help notice the striking similarities between the new Facebook photo viewer and its counterpart on Google+.

Put side by side, the only difference between the Google+ photo viewer and Facebook’s is a darker background and more black space between the picture and comments. However, the photo viewer is not the first Google+ feature that inspired Facebook.

The improved friends lists in Facebook, introduced last year, are basically a version of the circles feature on Google+, albeit not a direct rip-off. Facebook’s integration suggests people for certain groups and can also create them automatically for you, if you allow it.

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