SAN FRANCISCO — Photos of kids, cats and babies are all over Facebook. A new feature called Scrapbooks gives proud parents a way to organize all those images by giving each beloved kid or animal their own tag.
A Scrapbook will display all the images of your child on one specialized photo page. It features a cover photo and profile pic on top of a grid of their tagged images.
To use the new feature, click on the new Scrapbook option under the Family and Relationships section of your Facebook profile and then add your ankle-biter. Enter their name, real or a nickname, and then chose a relationship: daughter, son, child (if you prefer to keep it gender neutral) or pet. Fill out their birthdate and voila! Start tagging every pic you’ve ever posted of little Jimmy, Tabitha or Sparky.
Product manager Dan Barak came up with idea for the feature after he had his first baby nine months ago. Little Rom was adorable and very photogenic, so naturally Barak and his wife wanted to share pictures of him wide and far. But they quickly realized there was no way to tag an infant.
That’s because children under 13 aren’t allowed to have Facebook accounts (pets actually can, though they have to be set up as Pages). According to a survey by Facebook, 65 percent of parents sharing baby photos will tag their partner or family members in the image.
Even without official profiles, kids have a huge presence on the social network. Scrapbooks are an early attempt to acknowledge and organize their online identities. If a child decides to join Facebook when they turn 13, the company will have a process for giving them ownership over their own tags.
Scrapbooks will slowly roll out in the U.S. starting Tuesday.
