Facebook buys facial-recognition site, Face.com

Last month there were reports that Facebook was planning to buy facial-recognition site, Face.com, an Israeli start-up for reportedly $100 mn. Now in a blogpost, Face.com’s team has confirmed the acquisition. The company’s founder Gil, wrote in a blogpost ,

Facebook has acquired Face.com! Our mission is and has always been to find new and exciting ways to make face recognition a fun, engaging part of people’s lives, and incorporate remarkable technology into everyday consumer products. If you’re anything like us, Facebook is a part of your life every single day. We keep up with our friends and family, share interesting (or mundane) experiences from our daily lives, and perhaps most importantly for us, we share a LOT of photos.

The terms of the deal have not been disclosed and Face.com did not reveal how exactly it would work with Facebook.

Facebook recently bought Instagram for $1 bn. Face.com was founded in 2007 by Gil Hirsch, Yaniv Taigman, Moti Sniberg and Eden Shochat. It has a unique facial recognition technology, which allows users to identify images and their friends online and tag them automatically. Face.com offers an free public API.

Facebook has been extensively using this technology. The two companies have been working in collaboration as well for sometime.

The Israeli startup had been resisting buyout offers from Facebook because of the low offers that were initially being made by the social media network.

The latest acquisition once again highlights the fact that Facebook is developing its social networking strategy further as it struggles to shore up its floundering IPO. It also recently acquired popular photo filtering and sharing site Instagram.