There were rumors and now there is the confirmation. After about 2 months of a $1Bn deal to buy Instagram, Facebook made another acquisition. This time its a facial recognition provider company called Face.com. The deal was officially declared on Face.com blog. The details of the sum offered for the deal were not disclosed but is considered that Facebook might have paid something in the region of 80 to 100 Mn USD.
"Facebook has acquired Face.com! Our
mission is and has always been to find new and exciting ways to make
face recognition a fun, engaging part of people’s lives, and incorporate
remarkable technology into everyday consumer products. If you’re
anything like us, Facebook is a part of your life every single day." This is what Gil from the Face.com team had to say on the blog post while making the acquisition' official announcement.
For those not aware about the company, Face.com is a 3yr old Tel-Aviv, Israel based start-up that provides APIs for third party developers so they can integrate the facial recognition software in to their applications. Apart from that they also have released a couple of very famous applications on Facebook. One is the Photo Finder which lets you find all your and your friends' pictures on the social network that are yet untagged. The other is called Photo Tagger which lets you bulk tag photos on Facebook.
With their technology, Face.com can identify your photos on Facebook in live video as well. Face.com also has a stand alone app for iPhone, called the Kilk, that can identify your friends in real time and can adapt image filters to people' faces. Facebook is said to bring the Face.com team on board and in house but its being reported by Face.com that Facebook will still be supporting their third party developers with the APIs.
Clearly the social network giant is turning a lot of attention to the hand held devices (read mobiles and smartphones). The Instagram acquisition and Facebook camera app give a great deal of support to the thought. What's more is that Face.com reported in their blog to be thinking in the same direction as well. This is what they had to say:
We love building products, and like our friends at Facebook, we think that mobile is a critical part of people’s lives as they both create and consume content, and share content with their social graph. 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.
Neither Facebook nor Face.com has yet provided any details on the mobile development they might be thinking of, but what is sure is that its going to be much fun for the you guys out there who love to be on the go and still be connected to their network. Stay tuned!
For those not aware about the company, Face.com is a 3yr old Tel-Aviv, Israel based start-up that provides APIs for third party developers so they can integrate the facial recognition software in to their applications. Apart from that they also have released a couple of very famous applications on Facebook. One is the Photo Finder which lets you find all your and your friends' pictures on the social network that are yet untagged. The other is called Photo Tagger which lets you bulk tag photos on Facebook.
With their technology, Face.com can identify your photos on Facebook in live video as well. Face.com also has a stand alone app for iPhone, called the Kilk, that can identify your friends in real time and can adapt image filters to people' faces. Facebook is said to bring the Face.com team on board and in house but its being reported by Face.com that Facebook will still be supporting their third party developers with the APIs.
Clearly the social network giant is turning a lot of attention to the hand held devices (read mobiles and smartphones). The Instagram acquisition and Facebook camera app give a great deal of support to the thought. What's more is that Face.com reported in their blog to be thinking in the same direction as well. This is what they had to say:
We love building products, and like our friends at Facebook, we think that mobile is a critical part of people’s lives as they both create and consume content, and share content with their social graph. 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.
Neither Facebook nor Face.com has yet provided any details on the mobile development they might be thinking of, but what is sure is that its going to be much fun for the you guys out there who love to be on the go and still be connected to their network. Stay tuned!
I wondet what are they going to do with it :?
ReplyDeletemobile is the word here. they are targeting the handheld devices so this sure makes sense.
ReplyDelete