Facial recognition is now Face.com Facebook

The acquisition was in the air for over a month and today comes the official confirmation: Facebook has acquired Face.com , platform that enables the automatic recognition of faces depicted in the digital photos. L ‘”friendship” between Facebook and Face.com , despite the two companies to share in their name, the term “face”, was long over.
” Photo Finder “, the first application developed by Face.com , in fact, has Facebook allowed users to search for another album in the photos depicting his face. Christened on the social network in blue ” Photo Tagger “, the application gathers and identifies the faces represented in personal albums suggesting the application of the tag . After one year after the launch of ” Photo Tagger “, in late 2010, Facebook has similar functionality built directly on the social network, first offering it only to U.S. users.


After a few months, the same feature was extended to all users also earned some criticism (we suggest the reading of our article ). Sophos, for example, was sent to Facebook vertices of an “open letter” urging the company to implement functionality with a significant impact in terms of privacy only in the face of an explicit consent from the user ( opt-in ) and not providing for the reverse situation (ie that it must be the user to disable it manually by performing the so-called opt- out ). With the acquisition of Face.com , Facebook continues along the path previously traced with the clear objective of integrating the possibility of tagging photos even on mobile devices . The technology that will help achieve the intent Facebook, comes from Face.com , a company specialized in facial recognition tasks in mobile computing.

This is a crucial process for Facebook that, at present, is to handle millions of daily photos, from mobile devices, which are not in any way “tagged”. And because users will automatically receive a notification whenever someone there “you tag”, the absence of a feature for face recognition designed for mobile devices is a business opportunity is missed to the social network by Mark Zuckerberg. engineers Facebook , with a presentation on the company blog, have already explained that it plans to launch a new set of APIs through which developers can interface their applications with the capabilities of facial recognition borrowed from Face.com . Companies involved in the have preferred not to disclose any information about the details and financial terms. Sources close to Facebook, however, speak of an understanding of the value of 55-60 million dollars of which paid in cash or payable in the form of shares. the problem remains, however, in vogue privacy. Critics fear that new features can be exploited to carry out targeted searches in the archives of the company looking for individuals and their network of relationships.

The profiles and photo albums of 900 million users would be a huge prize for anyone looking for a name, from a simple face. Many of the exceptions raised were already being analyzed by the FTC ( Federal Trade Commission ) U.S.. Meanwhile, after weeks of full emergence, the title of Facebook is starting to show positive signs in stock overcoming the psychological barrier of $ 30 (yesterday closed at 31.4 U.S. dollars). Still far from the starting value (38 dollars).