Facebook Acquires Face.com For Close To $60 Million

Sites include Face.com , Facebook.com . Published on July 10th, 2012. Written by Anthony West.

Facial recognition company Face.com has a new owner—Facebook. After weeks of back and forth negotiations and wild speculation about price, the social networking giant has acquired the company for $60 million.

The new figure is a quite a step down from the $100 million or so that was rumored a few weeks ago and given that the deal was struck based on what is being dubbed a ‘complete acquisition’, you can’t help but wonder if Facebook strong armed the whole affair. That of course, is pure speculation but whatever the circumstances; Facebook now owns all the technology and talent of Face.com.

The $60 million pay-out is quite a decent one for the Israeli-based company which was started back in 2007. A lot of new technologies have come on the scene since then and Face.com is not the best platform out there for doing the sort of things it does. Perhaps the final price was based on this fact. CEO Gil Hirsch was quick to remind developers tapping Face.com’s API that their apps would be still be supported.

Facebook on the other hand now gets its hands on a bit of technology that can better handle tagging of photos—something its native app is could use some help with.

The acquisition which many now will say comes in ‘under budget’ should sooth investors who still have a bitter taste in their mouth from the Facebook mega-flop IPO held back in May.