The Better to See You With: Facebook Buys Better Facial Recognition

Following its expensive buy-up of Instagram, Facebook has grabbed another mobile, photo-centric app, with its acquisition of facial recognition app maker Face.com, hoping to beef up its currently lack-luster mobile department.

Following its expensive buy-up of Instagram, Facebook has grabbed another mobile, photo-centric app, with its acquisition of facial recognition app maker Face.com, hoping to beef up its currently lack-luster mobile department. Though the price was not disclosed, TechCrunch's Alexia Tsotsis has sources saying it falls in a more-reasonable-than-Instagram, $80 to $100 million range. From the announcement on Face.com's site, we can already tell the acquisition has a lot to do with Facebook's admitted Achilles's heel: Mobile.

"We love building products, and like our friends at Facebook, we think that mobile is a critical part of people’s lives as they both create and consume content, and share content with their social graph," writes CEO Gil Hirsch on the company blog. Facebook might think that mobile is "a critical part of people's lives" but it has yet it to prove it knows how to capitalize on that. "By working with Facebook directly, and joining their team, we’ll have more opportunities to build amazing products that will be employed by consumers – that’s all we’ve ever wanted to do.  :)," adds Gil, alluding to the future mobile projects we'll see coming out of Facebook. Now that it has both Instagram, Face, and its own photo app, we're predicting some sort of creepy facial recognition with nostalgic filters and a sleek interface.