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Face.com acquired by Facebook

face.com

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Re: Face.com acquired by Facebook

#31

Post by maayank »

In 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

Re: Face.com acquired by Facebook

#32

Post by swalsh »

Mystalic wrote: post #4

I 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.

Facebook kind of already has facial recognition. I've seen it auto tag before. I would doubt this is in an effort to increase their existing capabilities (which seem to be pretty good already) my guess is this is more likely an anti-competitive bid.

Re: Face.com acquired by Facebook

#36

Post by beagle3 »

toemetoch wrote: post #21
beagle3 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook 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)

Could 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.

Probably 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

Re: Face.com acquired by Facebook

#37

Post by beagle3 »

swalsh wrote: post #32
Mystalic wrote: post #4

I 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.

Facebook kind of already has facial recognition. I've seen it auto tag before. I would doubt this is in an effort to increase their existing capabilities (which seem to be pretty good already) my guess is this is more likely an anti-competitive bid.

facebook's facial recognition was wholly (or at least mostly) powered by face.com already. They're just making sure no one else can threaten that flow.

Re: Face.com acquired by Facebook

#38

Post by polynomial »

This 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.

Re: Face.com acquired by Facebook

#39

Post by tlrobinson »

MiguelHudnandez wrote: post #29
tlrobinson wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the reactions to Facebook's past privacy debacles I would be surprised if they didn't allow people to opt out.

Curious -- 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.

No, 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.

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