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Face.com acquired by Facebook
- jameswyse 14y agoFrom the title I thought they were just after the domain name! Seems they have picked up some pretty cool face recognising kit.
- ma2xd 14y agoYet another reason to not use Facebook.
- gaving 14y agoYeah. Can't wait for my facebook using mates to make my shadow profile more accurate.
- MiguelHudnandez 14y agoThis could revolutionize the Facebook signup process. Instead of entering all that pesky personal information, just snap a pic with your webcam. They already know all that info!
- gaius 14y agoYou joke, but the early signup process for Google App Engine was just your Gmail password, then they told you if you were accepted into the beta programme or not. They already read all your mail, they know if they wanted you in or not...
- jps359 14y agowait why?
- vecinu 14y agoPerhaps due to the fact that automatic face detection is an invasion of privacy.
- smackfu 14y agoThe fundamental problem is that a camera is a privacy removing tool. If someone takes your photo, now they are in charge of your privacy.
- nirai 14y agoRight, we are back to the days when taking ones photo was like stealing their life.
- jps359 14y agoNow that you mention that, that's a good reason. Would it be possible for facebook to use this to build a database of photos of people's faces or facial features? I really don't like the sounds of that. I apologize -- I really don't use any social media personally outside twitter on occasion.
- TomGullen 14y agoHow so?
- evan_ 14y agoWhy is automatic face detection an invasion of privacy? Isn't sharing the picture in the first place the invasion of privacy? Facebook is making it possible, but your friends are the ones doing it.
- Mystalic 14y agoI suspect Facebook has bigger plans for Face.com's technology than auto-tagging. I bet they integrate facial recognition technology into the Facebook Platform. Tagging every face... everywhere... and sending that data back to Facebook. That could be monumental.
- vecinu 14y agoMonumental or invasive? I personally fear for the latter.
- Mystalic 14y agoMost likely both.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- tlrobinson 14y agoGiven the reactions to Facebook's past privacy debacles I would be surprised if they didn't allow people to opt out.
- MiguelHudnandez 14y agoCurious -- given that you would be recognized in other people's photos, would they have a list of faces which are opted out, once recognized? For the very purpose of storing your opt-out preference, they would have to keep a record of your facial features, or you would continuously come up again as people tagged you manually.
- tlrobinson 14y agoNo, they just have to store the fact that you don't want your account to be tagged in other people's photos. Of course that doesn't stop people from tagging as your name (not linked to your account) or a variation of it, but that's a losing battle. Actually they already allow you to opt out of the facial recognition feature: "Who sees tag suggestions when photos that look like you are uploaded?" ("Friends" or "No one") You can also set Facebook to require manual review of friends' tags of you. I'm not sure if there's a way to completely opt out of being tagged though.
- vecinu 14y agoI remember Facebook recently implemented their controversial Face detecting module. Privacy advocates were freaked out because Facebook was trying to automatically tag people in photos simply based on face recognition. I assume they're going to be moving forward in that regard by acquiring Face.com's tech.
- beagle3 14y agoFacebook have been using face.com for face detection and recognition for a while. I guess they were happy enough with the results that they wanted control of the technology (and/or to stop others from using it)
- toemetoch 14y agoCould it be that the license to process the volume facebook has in mind is near or higher than the price of the company? I don't know the price model for the face API but it's not unreasonable to consider a tipping point.
- beagle3 14y agoProbably not. It's so far been a symbiotic relation - face.com needed facebook as much as facebook needed face.com. Facebook is probably making sure that this symbiotic relation is not going to be threatened by a competitor buying face.com
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- sokrates 14y agoProbably just for the domain.
- vecinu 14y agoThis is incorrect. Read the entire post and realize that Facebook has been using Face.com's tech for facial tagging already.
- danso 14y agoWow, I assumed that Face.com was a part of Facebook.com...their look and feel seemed like a front-facing spinoff of FB, to get developers more interested in the technology. Their API has been very generous and useful for all sorts of projects, but I'm sure this is going to freak privacy advocates even more...frankly, the connections/derivations FB could make with face recognition will not be any more comprehensive than what they can already do with the interaction data they already have.
- CaveTech 14y agoFacebook has already been using facial recognition for some time. If anything it will just increase the success rate of their current approach.
- evilbit 14y agofacebook really seems to be intent on becoming the world's largest photo-sharing site. the question is: are they planning to transform that from "omg check out these crazy party pics" into "everything is photographed and we've identified everyone involved" variety? it seems to me that the implications of this line of progress are incomprehensibly far-reaching...
- timaelliott 14y agoGet ready, http://book.com http://book.com, you're next!
- RyanMcGreal 14y agoWatch out, Book.com - you're next.
- amitparikh 14y agohah, of course Book.com is owned by B&N. Can't wait for a FaceNook tablet.
- polyfractal 14y agoWell, FaceBook is trying to develop a FB phone...so the FaceNook isn't as crazy as it may sound.
- UTHorsey 14y agoPretty sure this is how Skynet got started.
- dan_yall 14y agoThey're also considering acquisitions of f.com, k.com and aceboo.com.
- radagaisus 14y agoFacebook already used the Face.com API extensively. Rumors about this circulated here (Israel) this past month. This is great news.
- maayank 14y agoIn a local geeks gathering a few months ago with Yossi Vardi and some Facebook executive[1], Yossi asked the executive "Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Redhat, Motorola, IBM, Yahoo, Intel, Philips, [.. more international tech companies ...], which one is the exception?", alluding to all of those companies excluding Facebook having R&D in Israel. As a local, happy to see them joining the list. [1] Actually David Fischer, son of Bank of Israel governor Stanley Fischer
- pork 14y agoFacebook doesn't have R&D anywhere, not even in the US
- necolas 14y agoI've been wondering if Facebook will do general object and/or product detection in photos to help them match highly targeted adverts to the content (and location, season, etc.) of a photo.
- alttab 14y agoLet the Facebook acquisition-as-innovation begin!
- polynomial 14y agoThis marks the beginning of a new era of facial recognition in social media, which is essentially a labour saving innovation so that you won't have to spend all that time tagging your facebook photos. Instead, you'll spend all that time untagging them.
- loceng 14y agoI recently discovered that Facebook had decided to remove my 'must approve when I am tagged' - nothing incriminating, just reminders of their abuse.
- latj 14y agoI agree with you. But I think the majority of fb users would disagree.
- chrischen 14y agoWhy do you say that? It seems like a generally unwanted feature. At most I'd think most fb users won't notice or care.
- coopdog 14y agoIf it's true, a notification would have been nice. Or changing the setting back only for people who haven't specifically looked at and increased their privacy settings in the past
- loceng 14y agoBut then they'd be directly acknowledging the abuse, and then you could quickly change it back - however they want pictures to be tagged of you and to become public so they can be shared to everyone who they think will engage / comment on them, etc..
- loceng 14y agoDisagree that they reversed a setting I put in place isn't abuse?
- antidoh 14y agoAn interesting phenomenon may come when unintentional photo bombs identify either celebrities or wanted criminals.
- van_gogh 14y agoThey'd better need some gTLDs like .face or even .palm (unfortunately .book already has 9 pretenders).
- starship 14y agoface.com -- all I can think of when I see this is "how much did they pay for that domain name???" It must have been in the 10's of thousands of dollars. How that can be a good use of startup resources is a complete mystery to me...
- grandpoobah 14y agofacebook still considered a startup?
- starship 14y agoI meant the company that was bought. "face.com" I wasn't saying facebook just bought it for the domain name. I was saying face.com, as a startup, at some point bought that the domain name "face.com" despite having little to no revenue.
- arrowgunz 14y agoLooks more like Facebook bought the company for the domain name. What's next? book.com?
- benatkin 14y agoThis is more vague than "support our service": > 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. I think the vague wording is probably intentional. It doesn't seem like the sort of service that facebook would be into providing directly to developers.
- mkramlich 14y ago"Drop the book. Just Face. It's cleaner." But seriously, facial recognition is a useful feature to save folks time trying to tag people with names in every photo. Also helps with discovering new people you want to meet. And yes of course it could be used for "evil" both by Facebook and the government. But that's true of any other technology, so arguably a wash.
- Vitaly 14y agoShameless plug here: http://search.labs.face.com http://search.labs.face.com - a site we developed for face.com lets you scan for faces all your Facebook photos and do some interesting searches on them, like "smiling child, female with glasses" etc.
- loceng 14y agoSo I'm guessing the whole face.com acquisition was to increase awareness of context of photos?
- panabee 14y agoyup, this is my guess. it's all about understanding users more deeply. hypertargeted ads. what's in a photo these days? location + time. along with captions and photo titles, FB can infer what you were doing, where you were doing it, and when. but many photos go untagged because it's a pain to tag everyone. face.com solves this problem, connecting a person to all the valuable ad data in each photo.
- treelovinhippie 14y ago$80-100m is far far too cheap. I think face.com made a poor decision here. Facebook will now be able to develop a system that will be able to recognize faces in any future or past photos (obviously including the 100s of billions they already have) and to link that face to a name and a bunch of demographic data. 3-5 years down the line, this ability will be incredibly powerful (think Minority Report, HUD overlays etc).
- newobj 14y agoInteresting. I didn't realize they were based out of Tel Aviv.
- nhebb 14y agoSo the next hot facebook app will be a photo tool to make your face unrecognizable by facial recognition software.
- DigitalSea 14y agoJust waiting for Facebook to announce their purchase of skynet.com now and then Facebook should have the market well and truly cornered.
- known 14y ago"Business owners and investors use systems, rather than their time, to generate income." --Robert Kiyosaki