Following a recent $1-billion deal to buy Instagram, the world dominating social network Facebook has now snapped up the small Israeli-based software company which created and runs the Face.com website – featuring a software which can recognise the faces of our friends and family from stored information on the website’s database.
High-profile business site Reuters is reporting a deal of $60-million for Facebook to take control and patents from the company, which currently employs only 11 staff and Mark Zuckerberg’s empire is yet to announce quite how the software will be implemented on its friendly community which now boasts over 900-million active users. We’d think that the Face.com contribution would allow greater and more reliable use of the frankly useless automatic tagging feature when photos are uploaded to Facebook, but we think you’ll agree it’s potential is kind of frightening. Imagine all our names and faces stored on a database that could be open to data theft.
“Facebook are in the process of building the largest and most accurate facial recognition database in the world, and with great power comes great responsibility” a spokeperson for Privacy International told the BBC in hope that the social network will be ensuring that all data collected on the true identity of our mugs will be kept far from malicious eyes and and that strict safeguards are employed.
Face.com like early purchase Instagram also allows its users to filter and edit their snaps and its though this might be introduced into Facebook as an additional photo upload feature soon – now along with enhanced tagging.
Check out the online press release at Face.com
Let us know your thoughts on our comments below or via our @Gadget_Helpline Twitter page or Official Facebook group.