Several sources are claiming that Face.com will be the first acquisition for Facebook in the post-IPO world. The buying price is said to be solid at $100 million and a deal is already well underway, according toTechCrunch.
Face.com offers a facial recognition technology that would be a big boon to Facebook. The social network prides itself on sharing user photos and having the ability to simplify the tagging process would “better reflect the social graph.”
Furthermore, there is already a Face.com tagging application that lets users scan their albums and those of their friends to locate and tag recognized faces. The company also plays host to an iOS facial recognition app called KLIK and a public API.
The two companies have been rumored to be in discussion for a while but it’s likely that a price was never agreed upon and thus, a deal never happened. Now that Facebook has plenty of money at their disposal, this roadblock has probably been removed.
One thing that is unclear is if Moscow-based search engine Yandex will sell their shares of Face.com to Facebook
as part of the deal. Yandex invested $4.3 million in Face.com which bought them an 18.4 percent share of the company and their CEO a spot on the board of directors. It’s reported that Yandex is interested in cash and stock from Facebook for their shares.
Face.com CEO Gil Hirsch told the publication in an emailed statement that he had nothing to announce at this time
By Shawn Knight On May 30, 2012
