Face.com, the software company of facial recognition has been bought by Facebook, the giant social networking site. The suggestions of the photo tagging feature of Facebook are powered by the products of this software company. From the last month of May, there were a lot of rumors related to this acquirement of the Face.com by the Facebook. This facial recognition software company, the Face.com also grants Facebook applications which are branded. One of the app similar to the Facebook’s own app is the Photo Tagger whereas Face.com’s very first app, the Photo Finder enables a users to search out his or her untagged photos.
Amazingly, Face.com grants an Application Programming Interface (API) and this is what boosts the third-party applications such as the CelebrityFindr which enables the users to find pictures and images of celebrities on social networking site Twitter making use of the facial recognition technology. Face.com is to support third-party developers as many developers are making use of Face.com’s technology in order develop powerful and amazing products. Throughout the announcements, nothing specific f what Facebook is likely to do with the software company was revealed.
The website, Face.com in a blog post said “We love building products, and like our friends at Facebook, we think that mobile is a critical part of people’s lives as they both create and consume content, and share content with their social graph. By working with Facebook directly, and joining their team, we’ll have more opportunities to build amazing products that will be employed by consumers.” Before the blast of the IPO, Facebook has reported saying that it is not tending to mobile devices rather than desktop but in fact mobile is of more importance as this is the key to many online faces and will also enable to tap via the cameras on mobile phones. And therefore, Facebook is very much turned on to attain the facial database of Face.com.
The backers of Privacy are finding this as a rising threat to the terms of privacy as the databases of unique faces of people are growing noteworthy. A privacy analyst named Sarah Downey said “There is nothing more concerning in the privacy sphere than the marriage of Facebook and facial recognition,” she added “Every time you’re tagged, Facebook learns more about your face and how it looks with or without glasses, in various lighting, with facial hair, etc. It’s one of the few data sources that Facebook has yet to monetize, and the acquisition of Face.com suggests that making money off your face is on their to-do list.”