Having recently become a fully-fledged company, Facebook is now obligated to make a statement of intent by diving head-first into the acquisition pool, and with Instagram secured and Opera also thought to be on the cards, the hotly-rumored coup of Face.com has now become official.
The big IPO was dogged by controversy, no less because many felt Facebook was grossly over-valued, and as such, Mark Zuckerberg has been trying to make all the correct moves in order to appease shareholders. The Face.com purchase has been on the cards for quite a while now, and we first caught wind of the murmurs at the end of last month that Facebook was ready to write another hefty check for the site, which includes a bunch of impressive facial recognition technologies.
Face.com’s auto-tagging suggestions facility is already utilized by the 900 million or so Facebook users, and now, Zuck’s pursuit of the company has been given the proverbial rubber-stamp. Speaking to AllThingsD, Facebook declared that its latest purchase "brings a world-class team and a long-time technology vendor in house."
The buy is suspected to be apart of Facebook’s aim to bolster its flimsy clasp of mobile apps, and although Instagram is the leader when it comes to pure image sharing, it doesn’t paper over the cracks Facebook still has in the mobile field. Its inability to monetize the ever-increasing mobile market was noted by analysts as one of Facebook’s glaring weaknesses, although with Instagram and Face.com now secured, plus Opera and others looking like future acquisitions, Facebook will be hoping mobile becomes a strength, as opposed to a weakness.
The deal is thought to be in the region of $100 million, although we’ll obviously know more once the purchase has been completely closed – expected in the coming weeks.
With a large portion of Facebook users (and web surfers in general) using their smartphones and tablets to log in, the next few moves of Mark Zuckerberg’s company could be crucial as to the path Facebook eventually takes. Eventually, the vast majority of Facebook use will move from desktop to mobile devices, and unless the company gets its act together – and soon – the consequences could be devastating.
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