What did Facebook ever do with Face.com?
Face.com is a Tel Aviv-based technology company that developed a platform for efficient and accurate facial recognition in photos uploaded via web and mobile applications. The company was established in 2009. with ten full time employees. Face.com has released and developed two applications for Facebook: Photo Finder and Photo Tagger. Photo Finder allows users to find untagged photos of themselves and then tag them. Photo Tagger enables tagging of faces which appear on photos that are uploaded to the Facebook site.
So, what happened with Face.com?
In June, 2012. it was announced that the company was acquired by Facebook. In official statement given by the Face.com, it was said that Facebook will offer it more opportunities to build products.
“People who use Facebook enjoy sharing photos and memories with their friends, and Face.com’s technology has helped to provide the best photo experience,” a Facebook spokesperson told CNET in an e-mailed statement. “This transaction simply brings a world-class team and a long-time technology vendor in house“.
Facebook apparently paid around $100 million for the facial-recognition company. Pretty neat, huh? But, Mark wouldn’t be Mark if he didn’t kept secrets. Again, Facebook declined to present any details of how it will integrate Face.com’s team and technology into it’s offerings.
“People who use Facebook enjoy sharing photos and memories with their friends, and Face.com’s technology has helped to provide the best photo experience. This transaction simply brings a world-class team and a long-time technology vendor in house.” the spokesperson from the world’s largest social network said.
Pretty much we all know how the visibility of photos works now. It all depends on your privacy settings and how much you are willing to share with others. If your friend uploads a photo of two of you and doesn’t tag you on that photo, only his friend’s friends will be able to see it. If your friend tags you, your friends will be able to see the photo in their news feed, even if they don’t know your friend. I don’t know what to think about it, as I still don’t know what to think about new privacy settings. You can guess that I’m not a big fan of it.
One thing is for sure. Facebook is trying to invest into better service. New and improved products are being integrated all the time, making sure users don’t stay on the network. As uploading photos and tagging is one of the most popular things, investing money into better service was actually expected. We all know what happened to Instagram 🙂 Although there are some other great social network out there, Facebook is still doing it’s best to keep its members.
