Facebook seems to have suddenly woken up from deep slumber only to discover that mobile photo sharing is the rage and is what all the cool kids are into these days. With a giant like Facebook, a simple remedy to such a problem is to buy out the company, and that’s exactly what they did with Instagram after closing the $1billion deal. That was just phase one, as the social networking site has finalized the acquisition of Israel-based facial recognition company – Face.com. Sources familiar with the matter around the web say that Facebook bought the start-up for around $55 to $60 million and the acquisition was a mix of both cash and stock. There weretalks about this acquisition back in May, when there were rumors about a $100 million deal, but today we find that it’s much lesser (or is it?).
Face.com launched in 2007 and already has two services up on Facebook. One is called Photo Tagger, which allows users to scan their or their friends' photos for known faces. The app scans photos and batches people for suggested tags that one can then approve. The company also has a service, called Photo Finder, which works similarly to Photo Tagger, where the application scans Facebook photos in your networks and finds pictures of you that you never knew were there. Face.com also has public APIs that third party developers can use to add features in their apps, and even after this acquisition, Face.com says it will continue to support the APIs. “Now, lots of developers use Face.com technology to power various apps and make wonderful products. We love you guys, and the plan is to continue to support our developer community. If there are new developments you can expect to hear from us here, on the developer blog, and through our developer newsletter," states the Face.com website.
With Face.com joining the team, it shouldn’t be long before users will be able to tag their friends in Instagram photos or better still, have all their pictures automatically tagged through Face.com’s facial recognition technology. After the acquisition was announced, Facebook’s stocks rose 6.5 percent to $31.97 at around 1:35pm in New York. While it’s still lower than its initial offering of $38, its definitely on the rise again, which should put a smile on investor's faces.
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