Facebook has increased the display size of user photos and loads them twice as fast as before in an update rolling out over the next few days.

Most likely a reaction to the success of large images on Google+, Facebook images will appear up to 960 pixels wide -- half the size of a standard 21.5 inch monitor -- in the photo viewer. Images on Google+ max out at 912 pixels wide. Older photos on Facebook will automatically be displayed at the larger size.

"With over 250 million photos uploaded each day, sharing pictures is one of the most popular activities on Facebook," Product Manager Justin Shaffer writes on the Facebook Blog. "We are constantly working on making Facebook Photos better..."

The photo viewer itself has been changed to feature a white background rather than black to put "more of the focus on the photo, and less on the surrounding frame," Justin writes.

Here's what the Facebook photo viewer used to look like.

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