Faced.me Will Let Me Add You on Facebook Based On Your Freaking Face!
Faced.me sounds like something that has to do with your face, doesn’t it? Well it sure does: it’s a mobile application that hopes to let you easily add people to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter based on nothing more than their face. While some of us still use avatars in the likes of cartoon characters or something that really shows our inner essence (stop laughing!), most people actually do use their own photos on their social network profiles.
Faced.me is currently in its early stages of development in Brazil, led among else by Marco Vanossi who previously created ClickPic which actually does use image recognition. TechCrunch discovered the company at Brazil’s Startup Weekend where it was chosen as the best startup at the event by the likes of judges such as 500 Startups’ Dave McClure.
Faced.me Will Be Watching You
The mobile application should (will?) work like this: you put up the Faced.me mobile app loaded on your iPhone or Android to someone who you’ve just met. It recognizes their face on either of the big social networks and follows or befriends them for you. Actually, lets see the video:
[youtube width=”555″ height=”312″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV4MmdgEfwA[/youtube]
Now back to me, Faced.me that is. TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez notes that the for now the Faced.me application uses only photos gathered in their own database from other Faced.me users. Vanossi however noted that their technology is actually ready and scalable enough to go through photos on the big social networking websites such as Facebook. The Faced.me team is of course looking for an investment to help them do just that.
Faced.me’s team believes that getting to know people is hard since you’ll often end up loosing their business cards, contacts, phone numbers etc. In business, that can be as damaging as Faced.me loosing a contact from an interested investor.
Buy Some Points, Mr. Networker
While Faced.me might be easy to use, it’s not going to be free to use any time you want. They plan to give you FacedPoints: you use one FB with each use of the application. You get 50 FacedPoints when you download the application and 5 new every week, which you can again accumulate to a maximum of 50 points. Guess the business model? Yes, you can get pre-paid FacedPoints for parties and a professional package for those who need to network to either stay sane or stay in business.
They aren’t worried that much about competitors either. As far as other startups, most of them, such as CloudContacts, are focused on business cards while the very social networks Faced.me uses will focus only on their respective users. Google is actually rumored to have its own facial recognition technology developed for Google Goggles, but isn’t planning to release it just yet. According to Search Engine Land, Google won’t put it out until there’s a very strict privacy control system put in place.
So Faced.me wants 100,000 dollars to scale a face recognition application you can use to add people to your Twitter timeline based on their face? Sounds cool, now lets just hope they launch the app by Christmas. Those company Christmas parties will be so much more fun with this one… Keep on eye on Faced.me’s launch by subscribing to their launch email list.
