The Israeli facial recognition company Face.com has just agreed to be acquired by Facebook. Dedicated to finding "new and exciting ways to make face recognition a fun, engaging part of people's lives" the company promises to maintain support for the many third-party developers who use its technology. Rumors of the purchase first surfaced in May, and according to TechCrunch the acquisition price was around $100 million. The move is the latest in a mini-acquisition spree by Facebook, fueled by its IPO cash injection.
Facebook has dallied with face recognition in the past, notably in 2011 when it opted-in hundreds of millions of people to the feature only to turn it off shortly after. This buy will raise inevitable questions about privacy, although both Apple and Google have already integrated face recognition technology into their products as well.
The New York Times, BuzzFeed Partner For Online Political Video Series
BuzzFeed's recent strategy to mix chunks of serious reporting in with cute animal memes has landed the blog a (strange?) new partner, the New York Times. The two news outlets will work together on an online video series covering Democratic and Republican convention events in the coming months. The series is an extension of the TimesCast Politics video series the Times began last month. The video series will feature Times Opinion writers, New York Times editors and reporters, as well as BuzzFeed's new political reporting crew led by its recent recruit, ex-Politico star Ben Smith.
Political Content Removal Requests To Google On The Rise
Google has released the latest version of its Transparency Report, in which it reveals data retrieval and content removal requests from governments bodies and by court orders around the world. Google has been disclosing government takedown requests every six months since January 2010 and observes that a global trend to target political speech has been on the rise. Google says it complied with 65 percent of court orders and 47 percent of the "more informal requests" it received for information removal over the last six months. The U.S. government led the list with 6,321 data requests (a 37 percent increase since last year), which Google agreed to 93 percent of the time. Other active governments included those from India, Spain, Germany, and the U.K. Google has posted raw data broken down by request type, origin, on its Transparency Report site.
Shenzhou-9 Docks With Tiangong-1 Space Lab
China's manned Shenzhou-9 capsule successfully lined up and docked with the Tiangong-1 space lab at 2 a.m. EST today. The Shenzhou-9 carries three Chinese astronauts (or, as China calls them, taikonauts), including Liu Yang, China's first female astronaut. This space mission will last 13 days, during which time the crew will perform a second manned docking. China is the third country to send a human crew to space, and this is their fourth manned flight. Near-earth space saw another historic linkup less than a month ago when Space X's Dragon became the first commercial space craft to dock with the International Space Station.
Facebook Launches Its Olympics Offensive
As the London 2012 Olympic games approach, Facebook has made a big play to capitalize on the PR opportunities and has launched its official Page for the games as a frontpiece to the sports, countries, and athletes taking part. It's pushing the message by suggesting that users "like these Pages to get the latest from inside the games." At the time of the last Olympics, Facebook's membership was surging past 100 million users but recently, and perhaps controversially it's said its membership is around 900 million people around the world. That's an indication of how much higher the Olympic stakes are this time around, just at the same time its rival Twitter is making its own play for tighter sports integration with deals like theNASCAR coverage one. Facebook may have to tread carefully, however, as the heavily branded and controlled event in London may not permit certain types of information to be shared by athletes or spectators over social networks
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