Pixable Aims to Change the Way You Browse Facebook Photos

Photo-project startup Pixable is launching a new Facebook app today that looks to change the way the social network’s members browse photos online.

The free app allows users to see all of their friend’s photos without jumping from profile to profile, browse photos by categories such as “most popular,” and get updates when specific friends add or are tagged in new photos.

As apps for sharing photos multiply and photographers upload their snapshots in record numbers, the move to create an organized way to rank and share photos could be a smart one. My 650 Facebook friends have uploaded a total of 107,900 photos, but I haven’t heard of a single service that will help me sort them or find the ones that are important to me.

Pixable says it’s attempting to fill the same niche in the online photo world that Google and Yahoo filled on the web when the number of web pages started to become overwhelming.

“It’s exactly the same with photos in 2010,” says CEO and co-founder, Inaki Berenguer regarding the early web’s growth rate and need for organization. “Two or three years ago there weren’t that many photos online, but now all of those photos are being uploaded. You have a way to access them through your social graph, but it is impossible to keep track of all of them.”

Though today’s version of the app focuses on Facebook, Pixable plans to add options to pull in friend’s’ photos from photo services like Flickr and Picasa as well as apps like Picplz and Instagram.

All of these photos would then be ranked using the same algorithm the app currently uses to rank Facebook photos, which takes into account the number of comments, likes, and tags on each photo. Users will be able to review the most popular photos and follow friends’ activities across all of their photo-sharing platforms.

Plans for customizable categories would also make browsing friends’ photos of “weddings” or “men under age 25″ possible. At which point, we think, there’s potential for it to become a really important resource in any photo lover’s arsenal.