Facebook Buys Face.com Facial Recognition Software, But Don?t They Have That Already?

Facebook Buys Face.com Facial Recognition Software, But Don?t They Have That Already?

Facebook rekindles issues in facial recognition, user experience and privacy.

Facebook has just purchased another company after recently going public and the billion dollar purchase of Instagram. ?Face.com?is a software technology company that creates face recognition software to automatically detect individuals in pictures. ?Facebook will probably use this technology to help it capture more pictures from users and automatically detect who is in them.

Several months ago it was revealed that Facebook already had technology that could identify individuals automatically and suggest to users who to tag in pictures. After the news that Facebook had such a technology, the Electronic Privacy Information Center based in Washington DC quickly made headlines stating they would be filing a complaint with the FTC based on privacy concerns that the new feature may be too invasive?(Read -?Facebook Launches Face Recognition: Are They All Up In Your Face?).

Will users be quick to adopt new facial recognition on the largest social media platform now that Facebook is publicly held? ?Only time will tell, but users seem to be against invasive technology that infringes on their privacy. ?The bigger question might be, why is Facebook buying something they already have?

Facebook is under pressure to grow at all costs after the recent IPO and expansion may occur at a significant cost if it doesn?t gel properly with user concerns. ?Mobile is the most important ?last frontier? in the social media landscape and Facebook will be working hard to monetize mobile device users which Face.com may not necessarily help in the short run.

Stay tuned to see how users react next time Facebook introduces technology that knows ? who you know. ?Over time, if the user experience isn?t altered much ? users will keep coming back.

Tags: electronic privacy information center, face.com, facebook, facebook user experience, facial recognition, social media privacy concerns, user experience

This entry was posted on June 19, 2012 at 4:31 pm and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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