Around the Net
Facebook Buying Face.com
- San Jose Mercury News, Tuesday, June 19, 2012 11:06 AM
Likely streamlining the tagging progress, Facebook has agreed to buy Israeli facial-recognition company Face.com for an undisclosed sum, but reports put the buy at around $60 million. The move will give Facebook “mobile fodder for its photo-tagging service as it continued to recover from a post-IPO Wall Street decline,” writes MercuryNews.com. A 5-year-old startup, Face.com offers free and paid versions of its facial-recognition technology.
Focused on social uses in apps and software, the company is credited with making advances in the increasingly critical field of mobile. "By working with Facebook directly, and joining their team, we'll have more opportunities to build amazing products that will be employed by consumers -- that's all we've ever wanted to do," Face.com co-founder and CEO Gil Hirsch wrote in a blog post on the site.
Adds MercuryNews: “The acquisition gives Facebook more experience in identifying people in photographs taken with mobile devices, helping add to its option of ‘tagging’ photos shared on the social network.” How Facebook handles the privacy issues surrounding such technology remains to be seen.
