Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Facebook Buys Face.com

All Things D: Facebook has acquired facial recognition technology company Face.com, reportedly for $60M. Face.com's iPhone KLIC application automatically identifies and tags Facebook friends in photos. By connecting with Facebook, the app scans friends' photos to develop a facial profile of everyone in a user's network. The app identifies people by matching faces in photos taken with, or uploaded to, the app to these profiles. The company says KLiK is approximately 90% accurate (Reuters).

The company also provides technology that reveals gender, mood, and even age. "We provide a minimum and maximum and approximate age guesstimate, only using the facial information in the photo -- nothing else," Face.com CEO Gil Hirsch said.

4 comments:

  1. Sounds like a nice tool for government control. Facebook as "Big Brother"?

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  2. I think you are just seeing spin off of existing govt technology, direct or indirect.

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  3. This is for "recommendations", to better serve up customized embedded advertising. Your face, front facing camera, infinite Internet database of images, they will know your friends, likes, dislikes, where you live, your age, and your moods. I bet Eran Steinberg is feeling ripped off, having sold his FR IP to Tessera for only $29M.

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  4. I'm very curious to know how facebook can generate cash incoming.

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