Facebook is taking another page out of Snapchat’s book. As noted by TechCrunch, the company has started testing a feature that would let anyone make photo frames for profile pictures, although the test is currently limited to a few countries.
Basically, you head on over to the new Camera Effects Platform webpage, upload transparent PNGs for each element, and wait for approval (so nothing too raunchy or offensive gets by). Approval “typically takes up to a week.”
You’ll need some design skills to make a decent frame, of course, as Facebook isn’t providing any frame creation tools itself – though the website does feature some design guidelines. You can categorize your frames as either ‘Location’ (for cities, places and landmarks) or ‘General’ (for causes, events, or basically anything else).
Once approved, people will be able to add your frames to their photos, and you can even see how popular your frame is with a few metrics on its performance.
The feature will initially be accessible in Colombia, Mexico, Taiwan, the UK and Ireland, which Facebook says are some of the regions that most commonly use profile frames, but it’s only a matter of time until it hits more areas. And while Facebook is starting out mainly with profile photos, the frames are also available in Facebook’s in-app camera that is currently being tested in Ireland.
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